NineTenths
by J. D. Dunsany
Summary: A long Inquisition-based novel set in the 40K universe, 'Nine-Tenths' follows Inquisitor Brecht and his diverse team of operatives in their attempt to identify and respond to the activities of a wide-ranging Chaos cult.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

They came for him in the middle of the night. Strange shadows moving on the walls of his room; misshapen forms looming large in his bleary vision; the flawless white surface of a mask as its owner bent over his bed, black smudges for eyes, a cruel sardonic slit of a mouth curving upwards in a vicious smile: these were the fragmentary images he saw in a scant few seconds of wakefulness. He had time to gasp, but not to cry out. A sickly sweet chemical smell invaded his nostrils and something damp and moist and bitter-tasting was clamped over his mouth. His eyelids fluttered frantically like birds' wings beating against the bars of a cage.

And then darkness descended swiftly, its suffocating touch rough and uncaring…

* * *

He quickly became aware of the ropes tied tightly around his wrists and ankles, and the wooden bench digging into his back. Sights and sounds, however, filtered through to his mind only gradually, their significance elusive and indistinct. Chanting ebbed and flowed around him, lapping at the shores of his consciousness. He couldn't quite make out any of the words, but there was something in the way that they overlaid one another that made him feel queasy. Or perhaps that was just the after-effects of the foul-smelling rag that had been pressed so tightly against his mouth.

His eyelids seemed heavy and sluggish, but, with an effort, he forced them open. Above him was a high vaulted ceiling, shrouded in shadow. With nothing nearer on which to focus, a wave of nausea rushed through him and he struggled reflexively against his bonds in a pointless attempt to stop himself from falling.

Of course, he remained flat on his back, bound to the wooden bench and, despite the discomfort and growing unease he felt, his cheeks flushed with embarrassment at his foolishness. Footsteps – soft, muffled sounds – drew nearer and the chanting grew muted. He sensed a presence standing over him and tried to turn his head to see.

"He's awake." The murmuring voice was feminine and quivered with barely-restrained excitement.

"Can we start now?" For a brief moment, the voice seemed maddeningly familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. His eyes tried to focus on the speaker, but, from his low vantage point, all he could see was her robes, wrapped tightly around her body, the swell of her bosom looming unnaturally large in his sight. There was something wrong with the girl's face. No one should have a face that colour. Perhaps the girl had been in some kind of accident. Perhaps she suffered from some terrible disease. Perhaps…

"Yes. Why not?" A second voice, strong and confident, tinged with an edge of educated refinement, interrupted his thoughts. "Let's start now!"

Hands were suddenly on him, expertly tearing at his nightclothes, exposing the pale skin beneath.

The chanting, which had appeared to be diminishing into nothing more than background muttering, unexpectedly grew in volume. He thought he could make out individual voices now, straining, imploring. He twisted his head round wildly, trying to make out who was touching him, caught glimpses of blood red robes, of masks grinning obscenely, of pale skin glowing beneath them in the half-light. He saw candles burning fitfully in ornate iron stands, but they were unlike any candles he had ever seen before. They were black, bloated things, exuding greasy flames in a half-hearted attempt at illuminating the darkened vault.

He renewed his struggle against the bonds that held him, but he was simply too weak to loosen them.

The second figure was bending over him, its mask streaked with red and dirty green. A blade glinted dully in its hand.

The first figure – the girl – leaned over. She was close enough for him to see the eyes behind the mask, see them glint with hunger as she gazed at him. No. Not at him. At his chest, pale and small, exposed to the chill night air. The knife hovered for a moment and then its blade pressed gently against his skin.

There was no pain, as such – just a slight stinging sensation and the coolness of the blade as it scored a delicate circular pattern into his skin – just above his heart. He whimpered, tugging once more at his bonds, but he knew he was helpless. And something else held him - a creeping fear, dark and icy, settling over his body, an impenetrable sheath of intangible force, heavy against his flesh. The girl giggled, but the other masked figure, the one with the knife whirled round angrily, shouting at unseen forms in the shadowy recesses beyond the candlelight.

"Keep going, you useless fools! Keep going or it won't work!"

The chanting commenced again, this time stronger, more urgent, bearing before it a hysterical edge that seemed to cut into his mind. The man whose words of command had marked him out as being the leader bent over him once more and his red and green mask suddenly appeared in the very forefront of his sight, blocking out the echoing darkness of the ceiling and the black, engorged candles. Involuntarily, his eyes focused on the red and the green and, with a sudden shock of revulsion, he noticed for the first time small clumps of matter within the paint.

"Won't be long now," the man murmured, his words slightly muffled from behind the mask. "Just have to speak the words…" He paused for a moment, holding his head perfectly still, and then his voice rang out clear and distinct against the background of fervent chanting.

The 'words' were unknown to him. But he could feel their wrongness in his mind. He tried to recall the stories his mother had told him. Stories of the Emperor protecting the weak and the vulnerable. Stories of His agents, the mighty Space Marines, arriving in the nick of time to set free the captive and mete punishment to the oppressor. He tried to remember, but the 'words' – alternately sibilant and seductive, then harsh and glottal – seemed to steal those memories, leeching them of their immediacy and colour, filling his mind with… something else. Something… monstrous.

"No…" he moaned, writhing against the ropes burning his wrists and then he gasped as pain blossomed like a razor-edged flower within his chest. He groaned with pain. There was a fire in his body – a furnace flame that charred his skin. Expecting to see tongues of fire engulfing his torso, he cast a terrified glance down to his chest and gasped again – this time in shock. He was bleeding. Oh, Throne, he was bleeding!

The strange circular mark seemed to throb on the left hand side of his chest. It glowed a dull angry red and, even as he watched, it seemed to darken, turning crimson, then rust red, then black. He was dimly aware of the leader speaking the words, shrieking and moaning and spitting and snarling, of the girl giggling, of the black candles guttering, of the chanting rising to a crescendo. But his eyes were fixed on the mark on his chest. As he watched, the black blood bubbled up through the hairline scoring. And continued to flow upwards – drawn by some unseen force off his chest and hanging glistening in the dimly lit air, each bead seeming to represent a distinct and self-contained world of torment and hatred and pain. He followed their progress, even as, in some distracted part of his mind, he noted that the pain in his chest was subsiding.

The droplets of black glistening blood seemed to be drawn towards a point some twelve inches above his chest. As he watched, these droplets seemed to disappear, to be swallowed into the darkness somehow. The chanting around him had taken on a hushed reverence. To his mild surprise, he found he could not look away from that point above his chest. The empty air seemed to shimmer for a moment. The leader of this strange band of robed people sighed and fell silent. The red-masked girl giggled again, nervously.

The empty air bulged. And then it was empty no longer.

A stain was growing in the air above him, filthy black, smeared at the edges with turquoise and violet, bright shards of colour that somehow made the air around which they flowed and danced darker and more oppressive. He swallowed and tried to cry out, but the fear had taken hold of him now, constricting his throat and drying his mouth. The stain continued to grow and he saw that it was spinning lazily, turning over and over just inches above his chest. With sudden understanding, he saw that, in just a few moments, the moving, swelling knot of darkness would soon touch his naked chest. He noticed that the mark – whatever it had been – was now gone; saw that his skin was untouched and clean, save for the beads of sweat that gathered on its pale expanse. But the stain was growing, the darkness that was its substance now shot through with streaks of angry red, the violets and turquoises fragmenting into brighter colours that he had no name for, but whose intensity threatened to overwhelm his terrified mind. He saw the trailing edge of a tendril of violet light brush against his skin and instantly felt a terrible nausea wrench at his stomach. A thicker finger of red-veined darkness dipped down onto and then through his chest and he screamed – not in pain, but in understanding. For he knew what was coming now.

He knew.

It started with a long, desolate sigh and a sudden rush of displaced air. The stain hung motionless for a brief instant and then its middle distended and stretched. He heard a loud wet tearing sound and a translucent claw-like appendage suddenly appeared at the very apex of the distension. It moved in a swift circular motion as if questing for something. It stretched and strained and, inch by inch, an accompanying arm, glowing dully in the red and violet light, emerged from the bulging blackness. It brushed blindly against his chest and neck, fingers grasping at his soft skin. Its touch was ice and fire. Involuntarily, he closed his eyes and this time found he could scream his terror.


	2. Chapter 1a

**Chapter One**

"Interrogation commences at 03:17. Present are Interrogator Vivienne Dranguille, Scriptorum First Class Abalard and Sister Elinore of the Order of Our Martyred Lady. The heretic will stand and speak her name clearly."

From her vantage point near the door of the cold, bare cell, Elinore watched the slumped, filthy form of the witch-girl stir and wide, puffy eyes struggle to focus on the rigid, angular figure of the Interrogator standing over her. Just behind Dranguille, the scribe stood, data quill poised over his slate, waiting. The whirring of some inner mechanism in his augmetic eye skated over the silence like an insect on the surface of a lake. The witch mumbled something and then slumped back against the wall.

"Stand!"

Like a chip of flint struck from the great unyielding mass of her stern and righteous patience, Interrogator Dranguille's voice resounded in the chamber. Elinore watched the scene carefully, alert for any signal from the Interrogator that she wanted her to intervene. Although she was a member of the Adepta Sororitas, she had been seconded fairly early on in the investigation of heretical sects on Phrysia Secundus. Her Battle Squad had been deployed to break up a large group of cultists in Brachius City, the planet's second largest trading port. It had been a short, decisive action, the twelve Sisters of Battle supporting the main efforts of the local PDF and a small contingent of Arbites, who had cornered the cultists in a compound a few miles west of the city. Taking advantage of information gleaned from informants within the cult itself, Elinore and her sisters had stormed the compound's central bunker, executing the cult's leaders with brutally swift efficiency. The cultists had broken quickly after that and it had been a relatively easy task for the PDF and Arbites troops to mop up the cult's rank and file, a motley band of the desperate and destitute, the iniquitous and insane.

Painfully, the witch-girl began to get up, one frail hand splayed against the wall behind her for support. Her arms were bare, purple welts and bruises clouding the almost unnaturally pale skin. A bloodied bandage encircled her right forearm, but the blood was long dried, the rough, cheap cloth crusted over and hardened. Elinore pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. The witch-girl had been a peripheral member of the cult, remarkable more for her connections and breeding than for her standing in that outlawed organisation. There were dozens more like her in the holding cells below. This was not the first interrogation the Sister of Battle had attended today and it wouldn't be the last.

The girl was almost upright now, teetering a little on unsteady, painfully thin legs. She mumbled something again and again Dranguille's voice, clipped and authoritative, sounded in the cell's close air.

"Clearly!"

The witch-girl looked down with hollow eyes, avoiding the Interrogator's piercing, pitiless gaze.

"Arielle," she said softly. "Arielle Magdalena deSouza Querin." She jerked her head upwards then, as if the recitation of her name had strengthened her momentarily, but she still did not manage to meet the Interrogator's eyes and she quickly bowed her head again, mumbling softly, "Yeah… Yeah."

And there it was. Arielle Querin, beloved daughter of Under-governor Stendahl Querin and his glamorous consort Philomena deSouza, was a dirty, godless heretic, a warpsoiled piece of gutter filth. Elinore had long since passed the point at which she could be surprised by the depravities of the ruling classes, but her sense of righteous disgust remained intact nevertheless. Her upper lip curled slightly and she shook her head, involuntarily tightening her grip on her bolter. The witch-girl was the worst kind of heretic scum, a low-level psyker who had been hidden and indulged by her family, who were too reluctant to surrender her to the Emperor's care. And this was how the silly bitch had repaid her family's well-intentioned lack of faith – blasphemy and wantonness in the company of warptrash, corrupted with the taint of chaos.

And now she would pay the price.

Dranguille leaned in close, but her words were still perfectly audible in the small cell. Elinore knew that, as well as being recorded by the silent scribe, they were being relayed to the Interrogator's superior, Inquisitor Brecht, in a nearby room.

"You are a heretic, Arielle Querin. Your sins and blasphemies have already been recorded and judgment is already passed. What remains to be decided is the length and severity of your chastisement. You will speak and you will tell us what you know of the origins of the cult in Brachius City and you will explain to us its intentions and plots and you will do so in as clear and instructive a manner as possible." The Interrogator took a long breath and then exhaled it slowly. "You may begin."

Querin turned her head fully to one side, displaying the remains of an elaborately painted symbol on her cheek, the integrity of its circular outline compromised by the dousing of purifying liquids she had received before entering the cell. Oddly enough, despite its imperfect appearance, Elinore still found the sight of it vaguely disquieting – as if the very thought of its presence on the young girl's cheek was enough to disturb her. She watched impassively, her senses attuned to the set of the Interrogator's shoulders, the tautness of her arms. Interrogator Dranguille's patience was beginning to dissipate.

"Don't know nothing…" the girl murmured in an odd sing-song tone. "No… no… yeah…"

With a swift stabbing motion, Dranguille's arm whipped up and she grabbed the witch-girl's jaw, dragging her towards her. Pain flashed in Querin's hollow eyes and, when it had passed, a lucidity was present in them that had not been there before. For an instant, the witch-girl looked frightened.

"You are lying," said Dranguille. "Your movements three days ago were observed by the Holy Emperor's agents and you were seen making contact with two men who were not at the compound on the day of the raid. You will start by telling me who those men are."

For a moment, Elinore saw a kind of helplessness in the girl's eyes – a mute resignation that was almost pitiable. But, the hollowness returned quickly, falling over her like a shroud and the same slurred words appeared again.

"Don't know nothing…"

With a contemptuous flick of her wrist, Dranguille flung the girl against the wall, not seeming to notice the resounding crack, as the back of her head struck the hard, unyielding surface. The Interrogator turned away, light glistening on her severely sweptback hair, mouth set into a grim line. She was talking again, but not to Querin – or, indeed, anyone else in the room.

"The heretic is proving uncooperative. The use of stimulants is recommended in the first instance. A full psychic scan may be required if that fails, but I recommend we use that as a last resort. The chances of there being anything salvageable after that are, in my judgment, fairly slim. The heretic seems to be seeking retreat in a…"

From her position by the door, Elinore saw it first. Soundlessly, the girl stiffened, every muscle in her body taut and straining as if in a desperate attempt to escape her feeble flesh. Elinore took a step forward, raising her bolter and it was that movement that told the Interrogator that something had changed. She began to turn back towards the prisoner, hand reaching for the laspistol holstered at her waist. The scribe was nearest the girl, quill still poised in one hand, dataslate clutched in the other. Elinore saw his eye widen in alarm, as the girl opened her mouth wide, jaw extending and then dislocating with a horrible cracking sound. The torrent of matter that poured from her ruined mouth hit the scribe full in the face and chest. Instantly, he started screaming.

"Purity seal!" Dranguille's desperate shout was answered by the clanging of shutters in front of the room's solitary exit. The Interrogator had taken the decision to contain this… whatever this was. The air was thick and crawling; the stench of decay, tinged with the tangy scent of ozone, assailed Elinore's nostrils. To her left, the scribe's screams became more desperate, hysterical and then, with a last gasping rattle, they stopped. The girl's head was moving, the gushing river of blood and filth and unspeakable corruption continuing to stream from her mouth unabated.

Instinctively, Elinore dived to her right, partly to enable her to get a clear shot, but also because, on some level, she was anticipating what the witch would do next. Even as she brought her bolter to bear from her new position crouched close to the floor, she saw the witch-girl's head continue to move sideways, spraying gouts of thick, scalding vomit over the Interrogator and into the corner, in which, just a moment ago, she had been standing. She watched the foul liquid drip in clotted clumps from the Interrogator's leather uniform, saw it steam obscenely in slow-moving rivers on the floor. Dranguille was firing her laspistol repeatedly into that impossible maw, even as the flesh of her face charred and smoldered. The las shots seemed to have no effect.

Elinore brought her bolter up and fired, loosing three rounds and seeing them smack wetly against the witch-girl's body, throwing her against the wall behind her like a spoilt child's discarded doll. The girl slumped to the floor, leaving three bright red trails behind her on the otherwise spotless wall. The rough surface of the cell floor still steamed, but the foul substance that had poured from Querin's mouth had now subsided to a dribble, much of it smeared unevenly around her ruined jaw.

Quickly, Elinore moved towards the Interrogator, almost slipping on the treacherous footing. Dranguille was clutching her ruined face, moaning softly, but her eyes flashed dangerously as Elinore reached for her and she straightened up unaided.

"Threat… eliminated," she said, hoarsely. She nodded to Elinore and turned towards the door as the shutters outside were raised and inquisitorial personnel began to stream into the cell.

Elinore was only dimly aware of them rushing past her, attending to the Interrogator and the corpse of the unlucky scribe beyond her. But, despite herself, Elinore was drawn to the small pathetic form sprawled in the corner of the room. Three long strides covered the distance between them quickly and Elinore gazed down at the ruined body intently. Yes, she had been right. The mark on the girl's face – a circular, spiralling shape that seemed to suck her gaze into unfathomable depths – was complete now, no longer smudged and indistinct. But that wasn't all. Bending down, she saw that the mark was no longer painted onto the girl's cheek; it now seemed to be etched into the top layer of skin – like a tattoo. Or a brand.

She shuddered, tasting a faint trace of bile in her mouth. Lip curling in distaste, she straightened and fired a long burst of bolter shells into Querin's ruined head, reducing it to a bloody pulp. The crashing echoes of the shots slowly faded, as she turned to meet the startled gazes of several Ordo Hereticus personnel and the grim, pain-streaked approval in the eyes of Interrogator Vivienne Dranguille.

Returning the bolter to its original position in her arms, she headed towards the door. She paused in front of Dranguille, careful not to let her horror at the red raw flesh of the Interrogator's face show in her expression.

"If you need me further, Interrogator," she said, quietly, "I will be found in my room, performing rites of purification and consecration. The Emperor protects."

Visibly relaxing as a medical orderly injected her with a powerful analgesic, the Interrogator nodded solemnly and, if her words were slightly slurred, Elinore would not dream of remarking on it.

"Indeed He does, Sister. Indeed He does."


	3. Chapter 1b

She had, she supposed, exchanged one cell for another. In the sprawling underground complex that was the Inquisitorial headquarters in Brachius City, there were three levels and a vast gulf in judicial status between the crude spartan room in which Elinore had ended the life of Arielle Querin and the one in which the Sister of Battle now completed her rites of purification. Their design and original purpose, however, were virtually the same. Roughly sixty years ago, the Inquisition had established its headquarters for this sector of space in an old prison known throughout the Segmentum Pacifica simply as 'The Hole'. Workshops had been refurbished, chapels renovated and many of the cells converted into living and administrative quarters for the scores of Inquisitorial staff the facility now required.

Of course, some accommodation required very limited modification. Deep below her, heretic dregs like the Querin girl were even now huddling into corners in stinking rooms, staring at spider-web cracks in fading plaster, feeling the cold of rough stone floors seep through their filthy clothing.

As she got up, Elinore glanced at the large crack running almost straight in a vertical line down one, badly painted wall. Her knees were stiff and cold. She had been kneeling for what had seemed like an age. The main differences, she considered, between her cell and those below her lay in the ease with which one left them and the willingness with one entered.

She looked around her slowly. Her eyes had been half-closed for most of the time she'd spent in her cell. Prayer had not come easily – at least, not at first. The memories of the foul eruption of chaos in that small cell, of scalding corruption spewing out of the girl's sullen mouth, of the scribe screaming shrilly over and over and over…

No. Prayer had not come easily. But it had come at last and, as she had cleaned each piece of armour, removing from it every trace – no matter how faint – of the corruption that had defiled it, she had felt, as if in sympathy, her mind becoming clearer of the doubt – and guilt – that had been eating away at it as subtly and surely as the most insidious of cancers.

In truth, she had felt responsible for the death of the scribe and for Interrogator Dranguille's injuries. As she had recited the words of the Lament for Lost Purity, however, she had come to recognise that she was not to blame, had focused her anger outwards towards the unholy festering madness of the minions of Chaos – and the stupid fools who were gulled by their own greed or lust for power into forsaking the Emperor's care. By the time she had finished her re-consecration of her ceramite armour, her faith was as strong and unyielding as adamantium.

Now, she stood, clad in a simple shift and grey leggings, looking around the room that had been her living quarters for the better part of four weeks. She took in, again, the large stylised 'I' with its three cross-bars stencilled onto the wall over her bed. She felt a curious mixture of pride, excitement and apprehension as she gazed upon it. This was not the first time she had worked with the Inquisition, but there was something about this time... Somehow, she felt more involved than before, although she couldn't even begin to explain why.

She glanced across at the bed, a low rough piece of wooden furniture with a thin mattress and simple cotton sheets. Arrayed on it, gleaming in the muted candlelight, was her ceramite armour. Elinore saw her face, bulging and distorted, loom on the surface of one curving shoulder guard. She felt a distant pang of pride within her, but suppressed it. She reminded herself that she served the Emperor – not her own vanity. She was His instrument, His servant, a highly efficient extension of His will.

"For the Emperor's glory… For the Emperor's glory… For the Emperor's glory…"

She whispered the words over and over again, focussing her thoughts. For a moment, she thought that she could feel His presence – a lightening in the room, perhaps, a warmth upon her skin. She imagined herself standing on a precipice, overlooking a chasm of golden light, a holy revelation about to expand to fill her mind with the ancient implacable truth.

"The Emperor preserves; the Emperor protects; the Emperor prevails."

Her eyes rolled up into their sockets as the vision became clearer. She sank once more to her knees, all but overwhelmed, her hands involuntarily grasping the rough cloth of the bed, twisting it, kneading it…

There was a knock at the door.

Blinking slowly, she shook herself and rose to her feet. The room around her seemed to regain solidity and definition as she took stock of her surroundings. The door was made of a hardened synthetic polymer, its surface a dull brown.

The knock sounded again.

Softly, she padded over to the door on bare feet, glancing down at her clothing. Satisfied that her modesty remained intact, she opened the door. A tall imposing figure stood in the corridor beyond. Elinore recognised it at once.

"Inquisitor Brecht!" Elinore couldn't quite keep the surprise out of her voice, as she stepped back, opening the door wider.

The large figure did not cross the threshold, however. Instead, he remained in the corridor, the flickering light from an overhead glow-lamp concealing much of his head in shadow. Even so, what features could be seen were instantly recognisable. Unlike some Inquisitors, with whom Elinore had worked, Inquisitor Aloysius Engstrom Brecht possessed a face that was strong and smooth, unblemished by augmetics. Elinore knew that on his right cheek was a two and a half inch scar. By accident or design, the shadow on his face hid it from her view.

Brecht inclined his head fractionally. His voice was clear and carefully controlled. There was a trace of an accent. Were it not for his rank, Elinore would be tempted to describe it as foppish.

"Sister," he began. "My apologies for disturbing you. I had rather assumed that your rites of purification had been completed. If you'd like me to come back later…"

His words hung in the air, a gentle question, but the Inquisitor made no move to retreat.

"No, no," said Elinore, quickly. "I have finished. I… I was just about to arm myself."

The Inquisitor nodded. "Good, good, Sister. I think that will be quite an important detail where we're going."

Elinore narrowed her eyes, curiously. "Going? I don't understand, my Lord."

Brecht smiled. In the half-light, it made his handsome features look curiously vulpine. "All in good time, Sister. You get dressed and I'll wait here. I'll explain everything in a moment."

She felt hurried, as she dressed herself. It was an unpleasant feeling. The litanies of protection and consecration that she was required to recite as she encased herself in her holy armour should not be rushed. Yet, the presence of the Inquisitor just beyond the closed door of the cell was too weighty a pressure to ignore.

She recited the words swiftly, but precisely, each word perfectly enunciated, as she pulled on her gauntlets and adjusted the bulky, but surprisingly light, breastplate. Finally, she gazed at herself in the small mirror hanging above her washbasin. The face that gazed back at her could, she knew, be considered beautiful were it not for the hardness of the pale blue eyes and a certain thinness of the lips. Framed by silver-white hair, cut in a functional bob, hers was the face of a thirty-something warrior, a hardened veteran of well over twenty actions, mostly on behalf of the Ecclesiarchy in purging one heretical sect or another.

As she examined her face in the mirror, however, she saw that something was missing. Many of her sisters decorated their faces with holy symbols, signifying their devotion to the Emperor. She didn't have time for anything too elaborate, but she did not feel comfortable with leaving her face untouched. Coming to a decision, she reached for a small pot of blessed paint. Holding the small brush in her gauntleted hand, she set to work with small, deft movements. She recited a particularly ancient litany – traditionally attributed to Saint Katherine – as she worked.

_Weep for the Emperor, for He gives Himself for us all._

_Weep for the heretic, who has turned her back on the Emperor's grace._

_Weep for myself, for, in my frailty, I still fall short of the Emperor's will._

Her voice caught a little on the final line, a vision of a corpse in administrative robes, smouldering in filth and gore on the floor of a frugal cell rising unbidden to her mind.

She put the paint away, rinsing the brush under the tap for a moment, before replacing it on the nearby table.

Purposefully, she turned away from the mirror and strode towards the door, the stylised shaped of three darkly glistening tears appearing to fall from the outside corner of her left eye onto her cheek towards her grimly determined mouth.

* * *

They walked quickly through the corridors and stairwells of 'The Hole'. For the most part, they kept silent, only the sharp clicking of their boots on the hard floor betraying their presence. Mostly, Elinore kept her eyes focussed straight ahead – just beyond Inquisitor Brecht's right shoulder. Out of deference, she had fallen into step behind him.

Every so often, she allowed her eyes to stray to the posters and proclamations pasted onto the dour brick walls. Many of them were fading and brittle, relics of the installation's precious function as a prison.

_Strength In Purity_, read one, _Hate the Heretic _another. Yet another featured the Imperial double eagle above the words _The Emperor Sees All_.

"The cult has deeper roots than we first thought."

Brecht's voice, smooth, perfectly modulated, yet tinged with faint traces of disgust, surprised her. She carried on walking behind him, her stride barely faltering, as she replied, "I'm sure my Lord is correct."

Brecht sounded amused. "Really? That's nice of you to say so." He paused for a moment. _Click-__click _sounded his boots. "Executing the cult's visible leadership seemed like a sensible – and expeditious – strategy. You and your Sisters performed admirably in that regard. But…" She saw him glance away for a moment. "Subsequent events have proven to be more… complicated than I had first forseen." Another pause. "I've requested that your Sister Superior extend your secondment for a further term. You've proven yourself to be a more than capable warrior and I… Well, I suspect this investigation will take us offworld very soon. I need… colleagues on whose efficiency and dedication I can rely."

That word 'colleagues' stuck in Elinore's mind for a long moment. She was aware that it implied an equality – or at least familiarity – between her and the Inquisitor that, in her view, simply did not exist. Inquisitors like Brecht lived a life far removed from her experience. The tiny thrill of awe she used to feel when working with them may have finally faded, but it had been replaced with a healthy respect for the task they had been given by the Emperor and the power and influence, with which they performed it.

"I," she began, "will be honoured to serve in whatever capacity my Lord deems appropriate."

Ahead of her, Brecht stopped abruptly, turning to stare at her, his gaze sharp. "I don't need another servant," he snapped. A moment of silence formed between them, its edges hard and uncomfortable. Then Brecht dispelled it with a smile. "I need someone who thinks. Someone who questions. Come, Sister, you must have some questions, surely?"

Elinore thought for a moment. She was distinctly unsure about the direction the conversation seemed to be taking. Hesitantly, she asked the only question she could think of.

"Why… me?"

Brecht grunted, but there was a twinkle in his eye. "Well, as questions go, it's a bit basic, but at least it's a start." He sighed and moved back a couple of paces until he could rest his back against the wall. He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "And it does require a fairly complex answer." He folded his arms, his leather greatcoat squeaking slightly as he did so.

"The first point to make is that I'm understaffed at the moment. I am, in point of fact, three interrogators down. At exactly the same time as the Querin girl attacked Vivienne, my other two interrogators were being assaulted by their respective prisoners – all of whom had been deemed low risk by this facility's processing department, all of whom had been peripheral figures in the command structure of the cult."

Elinore's eyes widened in surprise and horror. Brecht grimaced and continued.

"Kaspar Banacek – you'd like him, Sister – a very devout young man – was attacked by his prisoner, who had swiftly and unexpectedly acquired horns and an extra 152% of body mass. It is only by the Emperor's grace that Kaspar still lives, to be honest. His prisoner's attempt to gore him was clumsy, but it still did enough damage to keep him in the med-bay for a week."

Brecht smiled weakly. "One of your Sisters Hospitaller is attending him at the moment. Perhaps you know her… Sister Livia?" He shook his head at Elinore's nonplussed expression. "No matter." Briefly, as if enduring a brief moment of pain, Brecht closed his eyes. "As to Interrogator Willans, well…" Brecht's voice took on a harder edge as he opened his eyes again, fixing his gaze unswervingly on Elinore's face. "It has been recorded that Interrogator Gregor Willans was killed at 03:21 earlier this morning. The warpspawned piece of trash he was questioning grew appendages of solid bone from his arms and shoulders – like an insect's legs… chitinous and sharp – as sharp as any blade. We… I acted as swiftly as I could… flooded the cell with poision gas in the end. Gregor was already dead by then. It had happened very quickly. They just finished removing his remains from the cell about twenty minutes ago. So you see…" He stepped forward, his expression serious. "I need you, Sister Elinore of the Order of Our Martyred Lady. I've replayed the pict-captures over and over again. You acted without hesitation or fear; you acted decisively." He paused for a moment, eyes searching her face, though for what she did not know. "Any more questions?" he asked softly.

Elinore scanned the Inquisitor's face, saw the confident smile, the faded scar on his cheek. But the eyes… behind their assured veneer, there lurked a haunted eagerness.

She thought carefully, focussing on the inquisitorial insignia sewn into the breast of his greatcoat. Something Brecht had said…

"Three manifestations… Only three?" She looked up at him, eyes narrowed. "Or were there others?"

Brecht's smile widened, although it still didn't touch his eyes.

"Very good, Sister. A few of the more… sensitive prisoners displayed minor reactions. Some teeth gnashing, some eye rolling, a fair bit of froth on heretic mouths." He shrugged. "But nothing of the order of the other three."

"Who… just happened to be undergoing interrogation at that particular moment?" Elinore spoke slowly, as if evaluating each word before she uttered it.

"Quite."

"A coincidence?" She held his gaze, questioningly and then shook her head slowly. "That's… unlikely, surely?"

"I've never believed," Brecht murmured, "in coincidence."

"Then…" Elinore's voice trailed off. Then… what? What did it mean? Brecht was watching her carefully. She shrugged helplessly, feeling, for a brief instant, that she was standing on the edge of something massive – a forbidding dark mountain looming over her in the obscuring mist, the weight of it pressing against her mind.

"Then, this… thing – whatever it is – has not ended, Sister Elinore," said Brecht. "In fact, I'd say it's only just beginning." Suddenly, he turned away from her, long legs striding down the corridor. "So we'd better hurry, hadn't we?" he called over his shoulder.

Elinore jogged a few paces to catch up with the tall swift form of the Inquisitor, then fell into step – this time alongside him. Ahead of them, a pair of double doors marked the entrance to the facility's launching bay, the three-barred 'I' of the Inquisition embossed on each one.

"Where are we going, my Lord?" she asked.

Brecht inclined his head towards her for a moment. Elinore saw that he was smiling again. "The Querin girl… her father is under-governor of Brachius City. He is, amongst other things, the third highest ranking secular Imperial servant on this planet. We're going to pay him a visit."

Elinore frowned. "And you want me to…?"

They had reached the entrance of the launching bay and Brecht halted, turning to fix Elinore with his pale green eyes. He tutted in mock disapproval. "You've not been paying attention, dear Sister. You're on my staff now." Then he grinned and, once again, Elinore fancied that there was something of the wolf in his expression. "Besides," he said, lightly, "I want to see how Under-governor Querin reacts when I introduce him to the woman who killed his daughter."

And then he pushed open one of the double doors and walked briskly into the landing bay, where, nestled in its berthing cradle, his personal transport waited, glistening under milky white spotlights. Behind him, Elinore paused for a moment. The corridor had come to an end and so had the ever present posters. Curiously, she glanced at the last one, which was shifting slightly in the draught with a half-shivering, half-cracking sound.

_The Imperium of Man Is Your Family_

Turning thoughtfully, she pushed open the double doors and followed the Inquisitor towards his ship.


	4. Interlude 1

**Interlude**

We are told that there are many different worlds in the Imperium of Man. Although they are all equally precious to His Divine Excellency, some, of course, are more comely than others: farming worlds, whose verdant pastures stretch across whole continents; rich trading worlds, whose bustling spaceports reek of sweat and exotic goods, and throb with the arterial power of Imperial money; opulent pleasure worlds where sapphire seas crash in foamy furrows on elegantly sculpted beaches.

These worlds are scattered throughout the blackness of space like glittering gems on a jeweller's sable cloth. Adyria Six is not one of them. Adyria Six is, on the whole, a dustworld – a ball of dirt hanging in the dark void of the universe. It is a speck, a fleck, a piece of cosmic grit, whose brief flashes of green and blue are almost wholly overshadowed by the vast stretches of dirty brown that surround them. It is, on the whole, craggy rock and drifting sand, under scorching skies in which the sun glares down like a baleful eye and rain clouds, as small and rare as silver coins, appear for brief instants at a time, before sprinkling the land with teasing showers of moisture.

Adyria Six is home to seven and a half billion citizens of the Imperium. In the small temperate zone located near the planet's north polar region, eleven hives cluster, ringing pleasant orchards and open sunny fields. Not that anyone but the very wealthiest of the hives' citizens will ever taste their bounty. The eleven hives of the Northern Marches gleam like bejewelled pyramids in the winter sunlight. At sunset, so they say, the scarlet light reflected from the glass faces of the hives' higher slopes bathes the pastureland in crimson, turning them a rich ruby hue, striated with darker shadows. To behold this sight from the top level of one of those eleven hives is, so they say, one of the Blessed Wonders of the Divine Imperium – a sight to stir the heart of any faithful worshipper of He who protects ankind as he journeys throughout the stars. So they say.

Adyria Six.

In the planet's one large body of water, the Ocean of Sorrow, is the Aqua Habitation – Hive 12. It towers above the waves, fixed to the ocean bed on eight massive stilts. It is home to twenty million souls, almost all of them employed in one of the two main industries in this region of the world – desalination and mining. Underneath the water, below the rock of the ocean bed, are minerals – iron, radium, quartz and lead – and the fuel of the Empire – raw promethium. Vast underwater mining crawlers squat on the sea bed, hunched bloated shapes containing mine heads, processing plants and refineries. Submersibles ferry their precious cargo to the vast echoing docks of the Hive's lower level. Great freighters, their massive wings gleaming in the unrelenting sun, transport that cargo to the planet's space port nine hundred kilometres away in Hive 7. This is a frighteningly efficient operation and has been so for the last ninety years. It shows no sign of coming to an end; Imperial surveys predict that the sea bed will remain viable for at least another two centuries. But, we cannot, alas, immerse ourselves in the intricacies of this slow, remorseless process.

Our destination lies elsewhere.

In the middle of the howling desert, defying the stinging sand, sits Hive 13. This is no glittering pyramid or towering sea spider. This is a sprawling, lumpen beast of a city, battered by sandlashing gales, pugnaciously setting its ugly, misshapen face into the wind, plunging its thick, black fingers into the softness of the desert's flesh until it touches the rock below, cracking it to find reserves of promethium that make those found on the sea bed look like mere thimblefuls in comparison. Subsidiary industries like glassworking and ore-smelting flourish in huge factoria, encrusted on the skin of the city like bulging sores, weeping black smoke into the baking air. But promethium is the undisputed king in Hive 13, the black sun, around which all other human activities revolve. It is its lifeblood, its breath, the very reason for its existence. When the promethium flows, the city is healthy and vibrant. When it begins to falter…

* * *

In an ornately decorated minaret, sprouting like a slender plant from the shadowy mass of the city proper, the Warden of the Great Sand Sea turns his noble head and allows a scowl to darken his chiselled features. Eyes the colour of a thundercloud look down… down… down to the largest of Hive 13's seven refineries and the scowl deepens. He has yet to activate the glow amps spaced at regular intervals around his office and so the light is weak and a hazy pinkish-grey. Still, he stares downward through the swirling sand, looking at the billowing clouds of smoke and steam rising upwards.

Weighing. Measuring.

He purses his lips thoughtfully. The figures on his solid maple wood desk – a priceless relic transported from Bandabaris Three, the famed arboreal world – show that the output from Refinery Alpha has been falling – not drastically, but nevertheless significantly. Next to the reports from the analysts and supervisors, however, is a smaller, but entirely more disturbing data-slate.

The Warden of the Great Sand Sea lifts his noble head, shifting his gaze upwards, scanning with his hard grey eyes the darkening horizon. He imagines the arrival of the Arbites ship, imagines the conversation he will have with the judge who, even now, is speeding through the warp towards him. He blinks, passing a steady hand across his thin lips for a moment. Then, moving with slow deliberate footsteps, he crosses to his desk and, eschewing his ornate gilded seat of office, remains standing as he activates the wood-cased vox unit that sits there.

"This is Velm," he says, calmly. "Patch me through to Commander Kirrim, would you?" He waits patiently for the connection, but the scowl has deepened further and, as the sun is swallowed by the desert once more and the light begins to die, his eyes are veiled in shadow.


	5. Chapter 2a

The pink light of dawn stole over Brachius City as the Inquisitorial transport craft banked slowly, describing a long, gentle arc over the southern half of the city. From her vantage point, Elinore saw that most of the buildings were still lost in shadow, as if reluctant to let go of the comfort of night. The watery sunlight glinted off the spires and towers of the taller buildings, however, and Elinore saw that many of the more ornate buildings were made of the silver-grey stone that was peculiar to this continent of Phrysia Secundus. A notable exception to that was the dark, gigantic shape of the Cathedral of Saint Antonin the Tormented, which sat, hunched and brooding, in the centre of the city in the middle distance. Whoever had designed the cathedral had known precisely the effect he had wanted, its dark granite bulk and obsidian and gold ornamentation making no concessions to the vagaries of local architectural custom, proclaiming more eloquently than a thousand sermons that this was a seat of Imperial power and worship, that the Church of the Emperor would not compromise its message for local concerns.

Elinore sighed and glanced across at Inquisitor Brecht, who was perusing a data-slate intently. She knew now that things were never quite that simple. As if sensing her attention, Brecht glanced up at her and smiled.

"Ready, Sister?" he asked lightly, before nodding quickly, anticipating her response. "Of course you are." He sighed and put the data-slate down on the empty seat next to him. "Just… keep your wits about you. Querin is first and foremost a politician." Brecht scowled. "I'm not expecting this to be straightforward." He glanced out of the window, his eyes losing their focus slightly. "In fact, I'm rather counting on it not being straightforward." He turned back to her, his gaze falling on the gleaming bolter on Elinore's lap. "I see you care for your weapon well."

Elinore paused, glancing down at the bolter. It was such a familiar object to her and, just for a moment, the Inquisitor's words had made it strange. She remembered her pride at being given it on being promoted into the ranks of the Sisterhood. Her Sister Superior at the time, a dour, thinfaced woman, had listed the significant actions it had been involved in, her voice rhythmic and solemn. Elinore had been impressed – not so much by the length of the list, but at the sense it conveyed of continuity. In her imagination, Sister after Sister, their faces sombre, paraded before her mind, each one carrying a gleaming, holy weapon in her arms – the same holy weapon. The same bolter that she had just painstakingly cleaned, anointed and polished, all the while murmuring the sacred litanies, soothing the machine spirit within it. Each one of her forbears had sworn to give her life in service, devoted to the Holy Blessed Emperor and the Church which venerated His name.

The bolter, then, was so much more than a weapon – it was a sacred relic and a kind of record, a solemn witness to the Emperor's power – and the unswerving dedication of those who served Him.

All along its barrel and stock, many of its previous owners (no, she reminded herself, not owners – custodians) had inscribed sacred scripture. One line in particular seemed to leap out at her as she gazed upon it.

_The Emperor's Law Is Just And Without Favour._

Her gaze flickered up to Brecht. "I… I do what is required. I value the weapon. It…" She was interrupted by a vox transmission from the nearby vox-pict caster.

"My Lord Brecht?" She turned to the rectangular brass frame suspended from the wall to her right. After a split second of grainy interference and the mechanical whining of the machine spirit within the caster, the glass sheet within the frame flickered into life and the face of one of the co-pilots resolved itself on the screen.

Brecht's eyes narrowed curiously. "Is there a problem, officer?"

The young face on the screen remained carefully neutral. "I don't believe so, my lord. Archdeacon Devenor requests audience. He is waiting on vox at the moment."

Brecht raised an eyebrow. He paused, then said, "Very well. Put him through – but vox only, Vernin. Vox only."

The co-pilot inclined his head. "As you command."

There was a momentary pause, while the link with the highest ranking ecclesiarch in Brachius City was established. Elinore glanced across at Brecht but his attention was on the pict screen, where the Archdeacon's face was even now forming, a dark oily stain on the surface of the glass.

"Archdeacon," intoned Brecht solemnly. "I am honoured by your attention."

The face on the pict screen was thin and lined. Elinore caught a glimpse of thick, greying hair swept back from a high forehead, but it was lost as Archdeacon Devenor leaned forward, his pale blue eyes seeming to bore out of the screen.

"My Lord Inquisitor," he began. Elinore recognised in his voice the verbal precision of one confident in his oratorical skills. "I apologise for the undue haste with which I have contacted you, but I've only just been informed of your current journey – and its destination." Devenor frowned slightly and, if anything, his gaze grew more intense as a result. "I trust you have good reason for your… visit to Under-governor Querin at such an early hour."

"Rest assured the Inquisition never does anything without good reason, Archdeacon," Brecht said.

"Well, I would quite like to know what it is." Devenor's voice was equally untroubled, but Elinore heard a hint of impatience in it nevertheless, as fine as a trace of gold in a lump of rock. Brecht kept silent for a long moment. He opened his mouth to utter a reply, but Devenor spoke first. "And must we talk like this, Inquisitor Brecht? It is customary to have visual as well as vox communication in circumstances such as this." Again, Devenor's tone was pleasant and unhurried, but, again, Elinore noted the mild reproach that lurked in his words. She saw that Brecht had noticed it too. He grimaced briefly.

"The machine spirit of the com system seems to be… recalcitrant lately," he lied, smoothly. "I'm afraid with all the cult activity of the last few days, I simply haven't had the time to attend to it." He snapped a warning glance to Elinore and the Sister of Battle nodded her understanding, imperceptibly.

Devenor frowned. Elinore had no doubt that the ecclesiarch had understood the implication of Brecht's words. When all was said and done, the cult that had festered in the sleepy city below them had done so under Devenor's very nose. If he so wished, Brecht had the power to excommunicate the city and remove Devenor from office.

"Surely you don't think Under-governor Querin is involved in such… distasteful practices?"

"I'm afraid I really can't say, Archdeacon," said Brecht. "Perhaps after I've had the chance to speak with him…?" Brecht shrugged. Even though Elinore knew the churchman couldn't have seen the motion, she had no doubt he would have heard it in the tone of Brecht's voice.

"Yes… well…" Elinore saw the corner of Devenor's thin mouth twitch in muted exasperation. "I feel I should point out that Under-governor Querin and his wife have been most… supportive of the church in this city." He paused, his brow furrowing. "I'm sure that your staff will bear this in mind in any future dealings with them." Elinore watched the Archdeacon's tongue dart out in a sharp, almost serpentine motion, to moisten his lower lip. She glanced across at Brecht, curiously, but the Inquisitor was smiling.

"I'm sure, Archdeacon, that they will. Thank you for your communication. The Emperor prevails."

Devenor looked as if he was about to say something further, but he evidently changed his mind, nodding curtly and murmuring, "Venerate His Name in all things, Inquisitor." His face wobbled, distorted and then faded slowly away as the transmission was terminated.

Brecht sighed and leaned back into his seat, gazing out of the window. The outskirts of the city had receded below them, giving way to lush forests and well-ordered farmland. Elinore knew that the Under-governor's residence was some fifteen kilometres outside the city – they were not far from their destination now. She watched Brecht's smooth, handsome face carefully.

"Yes," said Brecht, suddenly, his gaze still fixed on the landscape below them. "Querin is a politician. And, like many men of his kind, he has surrounded himself with friends who have power and influence. A very sensible strategy." He turned to face her once more and Elinore was struck by the bleakness in his brown eyes. "But it will not save him, Sister Elinore. It will not save him at all."

Its engines whining shrilly, the transport craft hovered above the trees and then descended softly onto the landing pad, cushioned by vents of superheated air. In her seat, Elinore felt the faintest of jolts as it settled onto the hard asphalt. Silently, she followed the Inquisitor out of the passenger cabin, the reassuring weight of the bolter cradled in her arms.

Brecht stepped out of the ship first, his boots clanging unnaturally loud in the early morning quiet, as he made his way down the landing ramp. Elinore followed and Vollex and Fenter, two of the Inquisitor's most trusted staff, strode down the ramp behind her.

* * *

The sun was higher in the sky now and, although it was still not high enough to penetrate the murky darkness of the nearby forests, it was bright on the landing pad, casting hard-edged shadows on the russet tarmac.

Elinore looked around her. The landing pad was some five hundred metres from the main house, but, like many of the ancillary areas in the residential compound, occupied an oval-shaped clearing in the forests that still covered much of Phrysia Secundus' secondary continent. All around the perimeter of the landing area, ancient trees gathered, their gnarled and vine-wreathed trunks forming a baroque backdrop to the more functional architecture of the hangar and control cabin.

Detecting movement just in front of the low hangar, she turned and brought her bolter up into a ready position. She lowered it as the figure, who had evidently been awaiting their arrival, strode purposefully towards them and she finally recognised him.

Achan Janner was one of the tough Arbites officers who had been instrumental in planning and executing the raid on the cultists' compound. Was that really only yesterday? His craggy features and jet black hair were his defining physical characteristics, but Elinore remembered him more for his acid wit and razor sharp deductive skills than anything else. Brecht walked towards him, offering his hand in greeting. Janner took it and smiled, grimly, shooting a look of acknowledgment at the other members of the Inquisitor's party.

"Good morning, my lord," he said, softly, although there didn't appear to be anyone around to overhear their conversation. He stared up at Brecht with unflinching eyes, the spiderweb of lines around them suddenly crinkling as he smiled again. "The house is currently under surveillance. I've got two squads of seconded PDF, each with an Arbites sergeant in command, watching the house from the north and west. There's a further squad waiting in the eastern forest should things turn nasty – or if we need to tighten the cordon quickly. We've not seen much of the Under-governor's personal guard. We know he has at least one full company on staff and I think it's wise to assume that at least two platoons will be stationed near his private residence. They'll know we're coming, of course. They can't have failed to spot the transport landing – or hear the Chimeras. They're not keen to confront us, though, which, I think, is a good sign – it appears they've set their perimeter reasonably close to the residential building." He paused and the smile vanished. "Personally, I'd like to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, but that is, of course, a matter for…"

"Don't worry, Achan," said Brecht, smoothly. "I'm not about to start a bloodbath. I just want to ask the Under-governor and his wife a few questions – away from the gaze of the Church." Janner nodded his understanding. He glanced at Elinore, questioningly. Brecht noticed and laughed good-naturedly. "I don't think you have anything to fear from the good sister here. She's as much a stranger to Phrysian politics as you are." He shook his head, glancing back at Elinore for a moment. She shifted a little under his scrutiny, but he didn't say anything, turning instead to the two black-clad figures to the other side of him. "You've met Vollex and Fenter, of course. They'll be employing their… unique skills once we're in the house."

Once more, Janner nodded and, not for the first time, Elinore found herself wondering at the nature of the investigation, into which she was becoming increasingly drawn. The silent, brooding forests and the still woodland air seemed light years away from the dingy, smoke-filled desolation of the cult complex, but the presence of both Inquisition and Arbites forces suggested that the tendrils of the evil that had manifested in the interrogation cell just a few hours earlier were capable of reaching into the highest echelons of Imperial society. She felt a growing unease in the pit of her stomach. Whatever else happened this morning, she was not expecting the meeting with Querin to end well.

But, Brecht was still talking and what he said next stunned her – and Janner. "And Sister Elinore is currently my second in this investigation." He flashed a smile at both of them, before turning smartly on his heel and striding away along the path through the ancient trees.

Janner stared at Elinore and then back at Brecht's receding form. He marched hastily after him. "My lord," he began, "I thought… Interrogator Dranguille… Just… just how serious is this?"

Brecht continued walking a couple of paces and then stopped, waiting for the rest of his party to catch up. He looked at Janner, soberly. "Vivienne is in the med-bay at the moment – as is Kaspar. Gregor's dead." He gave a brief bleak smile, a twitch of his mouth. "That's how serious it is, Achan." He shrugged and turned away again, this time walking a little more slowly. "We play this one carefully, my friend. Keep your eyes open and your wits about you. Our foe is treacherous and we must be vigilant." He glanced back at Janner and Elinore, a grim smirk on his lips. "Not that either of you need me to tell you that." He picked up the pace again, moving briskly. "Come on!

This isn't a morning stroll, you know."

Despite the Inquisitor's words, Elinore found it hard to think of the group's walk through the forested grounds of the Under-governor's residence as anything else. Small marsupials skittered nervously across the pathway ahead of them, leaping up off powerful hind legs to cling to the lower branches of the trees, before swinging themselves nimbly up into the shadowy leafy boughs above.

All around them, birds sang in apparent appreciation of the new day. Growing up as she had in the uncompromising austerity of the convent on Ophelia VII, she felt both unease and wonder tug at her as she walked amongst the trees. It was hard to imagine the taint of Chaos touching such an idyllic place.

Then, the Inquisitor and his party broke through the treeline and Elinore scolded herself for her foolishness. For where there was power, so too was the possibility of corruption. And the residence of Under-governor Stendahl Querin virtually screamed power.

Brecht didn't break stride as he emerged into the morning sunlight, following the straight path to the door set into the side of the residence, but Elinore couldn't help pause for a moment to take in the sight before her.

The Under-governor's residence was a three-storey building made from dark timber and silver stone. The landing pad was to the south-west of the house, so consequently, the party did not have a full view of the south-facing front, but what they could see of it was impressive. Green bearded plants dripped from stone-carved balconies like organic stalactites. Large windows overlooked deep emerald lawns, bisected by the house's shadow. Crenellated towers thrust upwards from west and east wings. Elinore thought she saw light air defence cannon protruding over the battlements.

"Honestly. You'd think you'd never seen a house before." Brecht had stopped a few paces ahead of them. He thrust his hands into his greatcoat. "Besides, we've got company."

Elinore looked beyond him to see that the side door to which they were moving had opened and a squad of green-uniformed guards were even now marching briskly towards them. Brecht turned to face them and Elinore and the others moved forward to flank him.

"Curtain up," he murmured.

Janner let his hand rest gently on his holstered pistol. Behind her, Elinore could sense the quiet, serious Vollex making small furtive movements, while the taller, thinner Fenter stood absolutely still – just like his Lord Inquisitor. Waiting.

There were six men in the squad, all wearing similar light green ceremonial tunics, complete with gold braid and buttons, and cream coloured breeches with calf-length boots, set off with large golden buckles. Elinore thought they looked faintly ridiculous. The dark grey las rifles the guards carried slung over their shoulders, however, looked menacingly functional. The squad halted a few paces in front of them. They looked nervous and Elinore didn't blame them. In front of them, the powers of Church, Inquisition and judicial authority were represented. One of the squad, a sandyhaired man, whose gold braiding was more elaborate than the others', stepped forward. He bowed.

"We didn't receive word of your visit, My Lord," he began, not quite able to keep a slight tremor out of his voice, "until… just now." His next words came stiffly, as if dragged out of some secret place in his being. "The Under-governor… is… indisposed at this time. Perhaps if you were… to return… at a more suitable time…"

Brecht gazed at him, thoughtfully. Even in the coolness of the morning air, Elinore noticed a bead of sweat starting to form on the squad leader's forehead. She almost felt sorry for him. Brecht let the silence stretch uncomfortably. The squad leader swallowed.

"Oh, well," said Brecht, amiably. "If we've arrived at an inconvenient time, then of course we'll come back later." He half-turned to the rest of his party, grinning. "Won't we?" Still smiling – and spreading his arms wide in a relaxed gesture, for good measure – he turned back to the squad leader, who was obviously beginning to entertain the possibility of smiling himself. "Except…" And then the Inquisitor's smile vanished, replaced by a thoughtful frown. He raised a slender, leather-gloved hand to his face, tapping his bottom lip worriedly. "Except, I do have some rather important information to share with the dear Under-governor. Something… now, what was it? Ah, yes! Something about his daughter…" Brecht beamed, as if delighted to have remembered such an elusive piece of information. "That's right! Some important information about his daughter, that, I'm afraid, couldn't possibly wait, so you see…" And Brecht stepped forward, closing the gap between himself and the squad leader in one imperious stride. "I'm not prepared to wait for your precious Under-governor, nor am I prepared to be fobbed off by some jumped up woodsman with a pretty uniform." Brecht's lip curled in a disdainful snarl. His scar stood out in sharp relief against his cheek and his eyes were as hard and unyielding as his voice. "So kindly stop wasting my time and grant me entrance!"

The squad leader's face had grown pale. He glanced nervously at his fellow guards, but they all looked just as nervous as he did. "I'm not supposed…" he began.

Brecht placed his hand on the man's shoulder, tactfully ignoring his involuntary twitch as he did so. "I'm sure you've been told that the Under-governor isn't to be disturbed and I'm sure that you're a good loyal soldier who understands the importance of following orders, but, please understand, I am on the Emperor's business and I will not be denied." He waited patiently for the other man's response, giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze. The squad leader gulped.

"I… er… I suppose you should probably…" He glanced back at his squad, but they were all stoically staring straight ahead – or, in one case, at the ground. "Right," he said, turning back to Brecht. He bowed again. "My Lord, I would be honoured to escort you into the Under-governor's residence. If you'd like to follow me…"

But Brecht was smiling again. "Oh, I don't think that'll be necessary." He glanced up at the clear pale blue of the sky and then towards the still-open door, its rectangle of darkness seeming to beckon invitingly. "It's a lovely morning. Why don't we see ourselves in, while you and your fine young men take a nice… stroll round the grounds, eh?"

The squad leader's colour suddenly returned to his cheeks in a rush of crimson. He seemed to be struggling for the right words. In the end, he mumbled, "As you say, my Lord. It is… a nice day…"

Smiling faintly at what she had just witnessed, Elinore watched as the guards moved away, marching across the smooth lawn towards the treeline. She looked across at Brecht, but the Inquisitor was scowling.

"Keep your wits about you. It won't be as ludicrously easy as that once we get inside." Moving quickly, he led them towards the open side door and into the house.


	6. Chapter 2b

Crossing over the threshold from bright morning sunlight into darker interior, it took Elinore's eyes a few moments to adjust. By the time they'd done so, Brecht had led his group almost straight through a small, sparsely furnished area. Judging by the dress uniform greatcoats hanging by their pegs on the wall and the neatly stacked crates of military equipment in one corner, it was evidently used as some sort of ready room. Sparing only a cursory glance for his surroundings, Brecht pushed open the only other door in the room and strode imperiously into the house proper.

The change in décor and ornamentation was dramatic. A long hallway stretched out in front of them, a wide strip of worn carpet stretching down the centre of the floor, leaving bare boards of varnished wood exposed at the edges. As she followed the Inquisitor down the hallway, Elinore noticed that the left hand wall of the corridor was panelled in a chequered pattern of light and dark wood squares, all varnished and gleaming in the light of soft lumen-lamps, which hung from the flawlessly plastered ceiling in regularly spaced clusters of three.

Nearest to her, the right hand wall was draped with a number of large, sumptuous tapestries, each one portraying a famous Imperial victory. One in particular – an intricate working of hundreds of figures grouped around a faceless enthroned man obviously meant to represent the Emperor – caught her attention. The needlework was truly impressive, each little figure representing some aspect of the Imperium – hive workers, administratum officials, soldiers and priests – picked out in fine detail. Rays of light radiated in all directions from the form at the centre of the tapestry. The memory of her prayers and devotions still fresh in her mind, Elinore couldn't help but feel moved by the sight. The Emperor's light washed over His faithful; no matter how small or insignificant they may appear to themselves, they were not unnoticed. Even though the tapestry's colours had faded over time, the skill of the weavers was plain to see. There was even a small Sister of Battle, part of a group that included priests and scholars, her tiny face set in an attitude of stoic devotion. Elinore leant closer, her face almost touching the ancient cloth, but movement on the periphery of her vision drew her attention away from the tapestry.

Some twenty metres or so ahead of the Inquisitor and his party a small dark object bobbed in the air near the ceiling as if caught in the flow of some unseen current. Elinore glanced across at Brecht, but the Inquisitor kept his gaze fixed grimly ahead.

"Surveillance servitor," he murmured. "Only to be expected."

As she and the Inquisitor's group got closer, Elinore could see that the servitor was a heavily augmented skull, a brass-encased lens protruding from one eye socket, while the other remained unsettlingly empty. The servo-skull was hovering at a point in the hallway where it joined a wider, more ornately decorated passageway and, as if sensing her interest, it floated awkwardly away. By the time the party had arrived at the junction of corridors, it had disappeared completely.

Elinore frowned slightly. The lack of human contact since their entry into the house was beginning to unnerve her. If the under-governor knew of their arrival, then he would not have let them wander through his house unchecked, surely? She glanced across at Janner and guessed by the look on his face that he was thinking the same thing. The Arbites officer was scanning the corridor cautiously, eyes narrowed. In contrast the other two members of their group, Vollex and Fenter, looked curiously unconcerned by their surroundings. Fenter, the taller of the two, gaunt and pale, stood stock still his eyes flicking to Brecht as the Inquisitor turned to address the two men.

"My lord! My lord, please… forgive me…"

Brecht scowled, snapping his head round to see a small, balding man, clad in the undergovernor's livery moving towards them. Elinore saw that he was carrying a dataslate, to which he referred as he halted before them.

The house servant bowed low and then gazed up at Brecht with small pale eyes. His smile was fixed and sickly. "We had no idea of your visit, my lord. If we had had some indication, we could have prepared a…"

The touch of Brecht's hand on his arm quietened him and he licked his lips nervously. The Inquisitor smiled in a manner that managed to be both reassuring and threatening at the same time.

"There's no need to apologise," he said. "I am here on a matter of some urgency and, sadly, that precluded the possibility of contacting the under-governor's office to arrange a more formal meeting. If you could escort us to him, I'd be most grateful."

Casually, Brecht let his arm drop and it knocked the data slate out of the servant's hand. The slate clattered to the floor and Brecht made a show of bending down to pick it up. Scandalised, the servant reacted quickly, crouching down to do the same. The two men clutched at the slate at the same time and a brief – and very polite – tug of war took place, which Brecht lost by yielding up the slate with a slightly embarrassed smile. The servant's face was flushed and not, Elinore thought, solely from the exertions of retrieving the slate. Without looking at the Inquisitor, the servant bowed low once more and turned, heading in the direction he had come from. His voice floated towards them from over his shoulder.

"If you'd like to follow me, my lord. The under-governor will receive you in his study this morning."

"Most kind, I'm sure," murmured Brecht as he and his retinue followed him.

It took Elinore half a dozen paces before she realised that Vollex and Fenter were no longer behind her. She half-turned to look around, but Achan Janner caught her eye, warning her with a barely perceptible shake of his head to keep her focus on the hallway ahead. Whatever plans Inquisitor Brecht had would be revealed in time, she supposed, but her sense of unease grew stronger with every step along the lushly carpeted hallway.

* * *

Ernst Montaigne Vollex was as happy as he could be, under the circumstances. Moving through the Querin residence with light, barely audible footfalls was almost like the old days, he reflected. Almost. It had been five years since he'd entered Inquisitor Brecht's service. The time previous to that was a blur of darkness, hunger and, mostly, fear. Brecht had recruited him from the very heart of the internecine strife of the lower hive gang war that had raged unabated for nigh on two years on the blighted world of Graltor. Brecht had needed someone with subtlety, stealth and a certain strain of curiosity. Vollex liked to think he possessed all three in abundance – certainly in enough quantities to make his involvement in Brecht's investigation team a more permanent arrangement. Of course, the fact that he'd more or less saved the Inquisitor's life near the end of that mission hadn't hurt, he supposed. Although, that said, you could never be too sure. Inquisitors were an odd lot at the best of times and some of them didn't like to be reminded of their mortality. Even Brecht had his moments.

Vollex glanced up at Fenter alongside him and then drew a compact, slender needle pistol from his jacket pocket. Its weight was virtually negligible in his hand, but he knew it would do the job when the time came.

His quick brown eyes scanned the corridor. They were nearing a four-way junction, which meant that they were close to the stairs to the upper levels and the chances of meeting members of the blessed under-governor's household staff were commensurately high.

"Look lively, Gustav, my friend," he muttered and then shook his head, wryly. "Never mind…"

Motioning Fenter to stay where he was, Vollex began edging carefully along the woodpanelled wall, the pistol in his hand. He couldn't hear anything, but that didn't mean… There! The tell-tale whickering whine of a servo-skull, perhaps the same one that had spotted them earlier. It sounded like it was about a metre and a half away from the junction, coming towards him from the right-hand fork.

Quickly, he moved back to Fenter and began unbuttoning the taller man's greatcoat. His free hand moved expertly to the inner lining of the coat. Something heavy was sewn into the lining. Something rectangular and metallic. Vollex looked up at Fenter's face and scowled.

"Sorry about this, Gustav, but needs must…"

His hand closed upon the rectangular object and his thumb depressed a large button embossed upon its surface. He was vaguely aware of Fenter's head jerking backwards and his mouth opening, but he continued to concentrate on the device in the coat. His thumb found another three smaller buttons to the right of the larger one. He pressed the top one twice and winced as an unearthly howling noise briefly screeched from Fenter's open mouth, before it rose in pitch and eventually became inaudible. He glanced up at Fenter and saw the taller man standing stock still, mouth open, eyes screwed tight in pain.

He sighed and shook his head. "Sorry, Gustav…"

There was a solid thump from beyond the corner and Vollex quickly turned to Fenter, once more reaching inside the long coat, this time deactivating the device that nestled there. He moved quickly round the corner and darted to the macabre object lying on the carpet nearby.

Crouching down, he turned the servo-skull over in his hands. The brass eye mechanism seemed inert; the skull's motor units were similarly lifeless.

"Lovely," he muttered in grudging admiration. The workmanship was excellent. He glanced at the back of the skull, brushing aside three trailing leads that hung limply from sockets near the base of the brain cavity. There were words carved into the bone in elaborate gothic script.

BY THE WILL OF THE DIVINE EMPEROR AND THE ORDER OF HIS SERVANT, HIS LORDSHIP STENDAHL AUGUSTIUS QUERIN, THE BODY OF MARLUS HERRICK LATOUR CONTINUES TO SERVE IN DEATH EVEN AS IT DID IN LIFE. AVE IMPERATOR.

"Lovely."

Mouth curling in amused distaste, he picked up the skull and looked round for somewhere to hide it. According to the house schematics he had memorised earlier, there should be a storeroom about ten or so metres away or… No. A better alternative had presented itself.

On the far side of the corridor, almost directly in line with his gaze, was a small statue of a saint, its alabaster hands raised in supplication, standing on a small circular plinth in a discreet recessed alcove. Swiftly, he moved over to it and deposited the servo-skull behind the plinth. He was about to move out of the alcove, when he froze.

Somewhere nearby a door slammed – perhaps the one to the storeroom he had been thinking about earlier – and the telltale sounds of footsteps approaching him reached his ears. He readied the needle pistol, bringing the weapon up to his face, and stepped out of the alcove.

She was a maid of some kind, dressed in the colours of House Querin, small, dark-haired, fumbling with keycards in her left hand, even as she carried an assortment of towels and sheets in her right. She had time to draw breath and then she fell in a graceless heap to the floor, a thin chrome dart embedded in her neck.

Vollex hurried forward and knelt by the girl. She was breathing comfortably and he plucked the dart from her skin carefully. Brecht had been quite clear in his instructions to Vollex. "The servants should not suffer for the sins of the master." All very grand, Vollex supposed, but he suspected that Brecht just wanted to be the one in charge of administering the suffering and didn't like to share that responsibility with anyone else.

Movement behind him interrupted his train of thought and he whirled, bringing the needle pistol up once more. And then lowering it again. Fenter stood behind him, his brown eyes seeming to plead silently with him. Vollex scowled as the taller man crouched down beside him, looming over the unconscious maid. He had seen that look before. He watched as the bigger man gently traced the contour of the girl's jaw, before dropping down to her exposed neck. Vollex grabbed Fenter's wrist impatiently.

"Yeah, yeah," he said. "She's very pretty, but we don't have time to admire now, do we?"

Vollex scanned the corridor quickly and moved his hands under the girl's shoulders. "Let's get her out of here, eh?"

Fenter blinked slowly and then stood up, moving to stand at the maid's feet before bending down to take hold of her by the ankles. Between them, Vollex and Fenter carried the maid off down the corridor, Vollex scanning the empty hallway with sharp, piercing eyes. It was time to find that storeroom.

* * *

The under-governor's study was not quite what Elinore had expected. While it was true that the room held wide bookcases crammed with parchments, books and a number of what looked to be ancient data readers, she was completely unprepared for the sheer openness of it. Light streamed into the room from ornately framed windows that stretched from floor to ceiling on two sides. The bookcases and desks were mostly arranged in the other darker half of the room and Elinore saw that those nearest to the windows sported doors of tinted glass, presumably to protect the more vulnerable parchments from the effects of the strong Phrysian sun.

Elinore felt the now-familiar sourness of disapproval, as tart as an under-ripe veijil berry, as she took in the room's opulent furnishings. A chandelier, dripping glittering crystal, cast sparkles of reflected sunlight on plush, velvet-covered chairs and a well-worn footstool, its legs carved from a dark, heavy-looking wood. These items of furniture were gathered in a shallow depression at the centre of the room, accessible by a single wide step near the entrance to the room, where Brecht and his small group had been left by the under-governor's servant.

Elinore frowned. This 'study' seemed to be a strange compromise between bookish learning on the one hand and pleasant indolent relaxation on the other.

"Impressive," said Brecht and he made, not for the plush luxurious furniture, but for the book cases. He stood in front of one, hands clasped behind his back, examining the books within as if he were a visiting general and the books had been arranged for his inspection.

Elinore glanced across at Janner, who gave the smallest of shrugs. Together, they walked over to join the Inquisitor.

For a moment, it appeared that he hadn't even noticed them, as he bent forward slightly. Without warning, his hand stabbed out, hovered over a small green-backed book and deftly prised it away from its fellows. Head bowed, leafing through the pages with almost reverential care, he looked to Elinore more like an adept of the Administratum than an agent of the Holy Inquisition.

Without taking his eyes off the pages as he examined them, he murmured, "I take it you've noticed the monitoring devices in the chandelier and the tall carving over by the central window. There'll probably be others. Sister Elinore, in the light, if you would. Achan, stay with me."

Nodding her understanding, Elinore strode over to one of the tall windows on the eastern side of the room. She positioned herself with her back to it. Her shadow, long and dark, stretched out before her, distorting as it passed over the angled back of a nearby chair. She swung the bolter from her shoulder, holding it out from her body for a moment, admiring the way its gilt-edged script caught the warm sunlight streaming in from behind her.

_To Do The Emperor's Will Is To Live In The Emperor's Light_

"You take an interest in history, I see."

Both Elinore and Janner swung round. A tall handsome man – perhaps in his late forties – stood in the doorway of the study, the hint of a smile playing about his thin, austere lips. Dark hair, flecked with grey, curled on his scalp and down towards his shoulders and his grey-green eyes were narrowed as if in thought. Under-governor Stendahl Querin was dressed in a loose-fitting white blouson tucked into tighter trousers that were the same shade of green as the uniform of the house guard they'd encountered earlier. The trousers in turn were tucked into black leather boots, whose surfaces were decorated with golden embroidery. The under-governor exuded confidence as he stepped lightly into the room. He was followed by two large bodyguards, dressed in House Querin uniforms that stretched across their muscular frames and seemed to be on the verge of splitting with every movement they made.

Querin moved slowly – almost casually – towards Brecht.

"And a particular interest in the so-called Black Sector Wars, it would seem."

"Hmmm…" Brecht finally looked up from the book and smiled. "Quite. Yes…" He looked at the book in his hand as if seeing it for the first time. Quickly he flipped it over so that he could examine its spine. "DuChambre. Well… a somewhat pedestrian account, really. Foch and Adenar are so much more… lively."

"My understanding is," replied Querin, carefully, "that Danik Foch and Gamt Adenar were judged heretics and traitors shortly after the publication of their histories of the Wars, Inquisitor. I'm afraid I couldn't comment on the… appeal of their work." His eyes seemed briefly to glitter in the sunlight as he regarded Brecht.

"Oh." Brecht looked blankly at Querin for a moment. And then he smiled. To Elinore, it was a playful, idiot smile – the smile of a child or a simpleton. Or a liar who has been found out. Not for the first time, she saw in Brecht something of the fop or the dandy. Not for the first time, she wondered how he had ever come to be an Inquisitor.

Brecht replaced the book carefully and turned back to Querin. "Ah, yes. Chapter four, wasn't it?" The smile had faded. "The third paragraph on page seventy-two. A single phrase in the final sentence. Such a small, insignificant thing to die for, Under-governor. Yet die they did." He paused. "The Emperor's will is just."

There was a heartbeat's silence before Querin's completion of the traditional response. "The Emperor's law endures forever."

The smile was there again, but something was stirring in Brecht's eyes. Something cold and unyielding. "Quite so, Under-governor. Quite so. Tell me… how long have you known that your daughter is a witch?"


	7. Chapter 2c

They'd been lucky.

Vollex took a deep breath as he stepped out of the service lift and prayed as fervently and earnestly as he had ever prayed to the God-Emperor of the Imperium of Man that their luck held. The maid had held key cards and the storeroom had held overalls and robes. So far so good. The overalls he now wore made him look like a maintenance worker or janitor-serf, while the long, lilac robes that he had hurriedly draped over Fenter's frame made his colleague look like… Well, actually, he had no idea what he looked like. But he knew he didn't look like an intruder at first glance and that was all that mattered. There were still six shots in the needle pistol to ensure the second glance never happened.

He looked around, his dark eyes glittering shrewdly. They were on the top floor now, which housed residential quarters for family members. Chances were that, with Brecht and the others stirring things up downstairs, this area should be quiet. He glanced sidelong at Fenter and sighed. Fenter was walking stiffly, his mouth open and his eyes staring wide. Pain was etched into every line of his face and Vollex shook his head slowly. Fenter was a freak to be sure, but, after working with him on a number of missions for the Inquisition, he had slowly come to regard him as a… well 'friend' seemed too strong a word, really, but it was close enough. What the tech adepts of the Mechanicum had done to Fenter was very useful for men like Brecht, but it was still a trade-off between power and comfort, between service to the Emperor and the ability to function normally as a human being. Vollex couldn't help thinking that it was Fenter who had got the raw end of the deal. At times like this, however, such considerations were easily pushed aside. The subsonic field generated by Fenter's 'voice' as he walked stiffly forwards ensured that any listening devices were rendered useless and also shrouded the machine spirits of any more sophisticated devices in a comforting blanket of meaningless sound waves. Yes, at times like this having Fenter around was very handy – just as long as you didn't look at his eyes.

Vollex took another quick step forward and paused. Everything was reassuringly quiet, but he had not survived growing up on Graltor by making easy assumptions. He assessed the area ahead thoughtfully. A long hallway, covered with carpet the colour of autumn leaves, stretched out before them with recessed doorways leading off to residential suites on both sides. At the very end of the hallway a large picture window let in the early morning sunlight, flooding the area with a brightness that he found distinctly uncomfortable. He frowned.

"Second on the left is where we need to be, Gustav," he said softly. "Come on."

Moving with practised confidence, Vollex led Fenter to the recessed doorway and reached in his pocket for the keycard. He glanced up at his partner as he fed the keycard into the recessed slot in the door. The reassuring click of the door's locking mechanism switching off followed a split second later.

Vollex sighed, as the door swung open at his gentle push. He turned to Fenter, who looked faintly ridiculous in his oversized robe, and grinned.

"Lovely," he breathed.

* * *

Elinore was watching Querin carefully when the mask slipped. Like an unseen dagger, Brecht's mildly delivered accusation hung in the air and it seemed for a moment that the lives of every person present in that room were balanced on its point. A series of emotions flickered across the under-governor's handsome features like the halting images of an aged vidcast: fear, outrage, pride and something else, something that was so out of place Elinore failed to recognise it. She glanced across at Janner, but his gaze was fixed on the bodyguard nearest him. The man hadn't made any overt move, but his eyes were darting from Brecht to his employer and his mouth was set in a grim line.

Brecht regarded the under-governor calmly, acting as if he had all the time in the world, in which to wait for Querin's reply.

The politician smiled a politician's smile. It fell light years short of his eyes. "Inquisitor Brecht, I must confess I am… disappointed. As any of the ecclesiarchy's most holy priests on this world would eloquently testify, I am a faithful and devout servant of His Eternal Excellency and have devoted myself to a lifetime in His service. To have a fellow servant cast these vile accusations is… hurtful, to say the least." He spread his arms wide in a calculated gesture of helplessness. "I… I don't know what to say…"

The arms fell slowly to his sides and Elinore tensed, suspecting that the action might be a signal to the bodyguards either side of him. But neither moved and their heavy duty laspistols remained holstered at their sides. She considered Querin's words thoughtfully. The phrase 'fellow servant', in particular, was a clever ploy. Even in a situation as precarious as this, the man was attempting to wrongfoot his opponent by reminding him of their shared purpose.

"Starting with the truth would be a good idea." Brecht's tone was mild but his eyes were hard. "How long have you known, Stendahl? When did you first notice? When she started completing sentences you hadn't spoken yet? When things began to rattle and shake when she lost her temper?"

Querin's gaze was locked on the Inquisitor and his voice dripped venom. "How disappointing…"

Brecht didn't seem to have heard, though. "Of course, she wasn't very powerful, was she? Maybe that's why you kept her. She was almost normal. So normal that you couldn't bear to lose her." He stepped forward, his voice low. "'The little foxes spoil the harvest.' Isn't that what they say? The small indulgence… the tiny sin… the word unsaid that should have been spoken. The word that would have called the Black Ships. The word that would have committed poor Arielle to the Emperor's care. And now? Now she's gone from you forever. A filthy heretic, a poor deceived child… lost and alone…"

Querin was trembling, more from anger than fear. "How… dare you?"

But Brecht wasn't finished. His face contorted with savage anger. "How dare I? You have the temerity to question my authority? I dare because I am charged with a holy purpose from which no man or daemon or alien can deflect me. I dare because I have walked the dark places of the galaxy and seen for myself the unspeakable corruption that threatens to engulf the worlds of man. I dare because…" Brecht controlled himself with a visible effort and his voice was low once more, though it throbbed with a barely restrained rage. "Because if I do not, the heresy that has taken root and grown on this world right under your nose will swell and consume everything in its path until nothing is left but a cancerous pus-filled husk of a planet." He half-turned away. "Yes. I dare."

"You're insane. Consumed with a zeal that has robbed you of your reason. You offer no proof of your accusations…"

Brecht whirled on him, eyes blazing. "I don't need any!"

Querin stared at the Inquisitor for a moment and then his eyes swept around the room, taking in its elaborate furnishings and dark bookshelves, the tiny motes of dust dancing in the golden light streaming from its windows. It seemed to Elinore that his gaze was one of regret and pity. It was in that instant that she at last identified the final feeling that had quickly flickered across Querin's face. The last emotion before the mask had fallen back into place: relief.

She was already bringing her bolter to bear as the under-governor sighed and then said, softly, "Kill them."

* * *

The sound of the bottom of the door brushing against thick carpet seemed to Vollex like a sigh of contentment. With Fenter at his shoulder, he stepped through into a wide room saturated in sunlight. Pausing just within the doorway, he took in the elaborately carved furniture, the delicate drapes concealing a pair of small windows set high up on one wall and the large white dressing table in the far corner, complete with a wide mirror set in an ornately worked brass frame. He smirked and felt a familiar sensation crawl through his gut. It had been some time since he'd last visited a lady's… Now, what was the word again? 'Boudoir'. That's what the maidservants of House Vanadir had called it. Yes, 'boudoir'. That was it.

He took a few more steps. If he hadn't been on a job, he might have taken off his boots and let his toes sink into the carpet, but he had more pressing matters to take care of. The schematics said that this was the first of a suite of two rooms. Back on Graltor, this room alone could have housed three or four families. He scowled. Now, why was he thinking about that now? He edged forward quietly, sniffing curiously. The air was scented – not, he realised, a single smell, but rather a number of scents blended together. They imbued the air with a delicate pretty freshness that seemed to complement perfectly the widely spaced furniture and clean, bright décor. The morning sun shone through a large skylight, coating the room and its contents in a watery amber light. Vollex felt a sudden stab of envy infect the excitement that shivered in his gut. As he and Fenter walked forwards, he was struck by the unfairness of it all. He saw in the large lacquered chests and richly upholstered divan a subtle mockery of the squalid lower hive habs in which he had grown up.

He glanced back at his colleague and saw a hint of wonder in his eyes, lurking fearfully behind the ever-present pain. With a short decisive motion, he removed Fenter's incongruous lilac robes, screwed them into a large ball and hurled them into a corner.

He shrugged. "Not your colour really, Gustav."

He then reached into Fenter's greatcoat and depressed the button he knew he'd find there. Fenter's mouth closed and the taller man looked at Vollex gratefully, the pain receding from his wide brown eyes.

"Let's give you a rest, eh?" Vollex said, knowing that any surveillance devices in the room would remain scrambled for some time now. He made his way quickly to the dressing table.

With a light practised hand, he opened the small drawers swiftly, rummaging through the trinkets and jewellery, but finding nothing of interest. He glanced at the table's surface, giving the hand mirror and brushes a cursory examination. Still nothing.

Seeing that Fenter was still standing near the doorway, staring around him like a peasant on a paradise planet, he moved over to a tall chest of drawers, its lacquered surface more or less covered with small vials of ointment and perfume. Ignoring them, he began to open the drawers. A small smile creased his face and he paused as he opened the second one, his hand poised over it like a mantahawk above its prey and then it swooped down. Slowly, he drew out his prize, holding it up in the sunlight and admiring it with lascivious eyes.

"Lovely," he murmured.

It was a woman's undergarment, a small thing of blood red satin and delicate lace. Almost as if entranced, he brought it up to his face and inhaled deeply, crushing it to his nose and lips. After a moment or two, he let it brush against his mouth and sparsely stubbled chin as he lowered it again. The sourness in his gut had lessened a little.

A shadow fell across him and he turned, scowling. Fenter was standing next to him, his eyes full of urgency and more than a hint of disapproval.

"Alright, alright! Can't a man enjoy the finer things in life?" He chuckled humourlessly and put the item of clothing back in the drawer. Fenter strode past him, heading towards the far wall, where a second doorway led to the other room in the suite – the bedroom.

Fenter's hand rested on the handle and he turned, one eyebrow raised in a silent query. Vollex turned to check the door through which they'd entered, but there was no sign of movement. He glanced back at Fenter and shrugged.

"Sure. Why not? Be my guest."

Smiling shyly back at him, Fenter turned the handle and pushed, swinging the door open wide.

From over his shoulder, Vollex stared into the bedroom. He was dimly aware of Fenter turning his head to look back at him, seeking some kind of explanation for what they were both seeing. But he didn't really have one and, in any case, he couldn't have torn his eyes away even if he had.

"Bloody hell," he whispered.


	8. Chapter 2d

Several things happened more or less instantaneously. From her position by the window, Elinore saw the farther of Querin's bodyguards draw his las pistol with almost supernatural speed, loosing off a crackling shot that slammed into Janner's left shoulder. The Arbites officer yelled in pain and fell awkwardly to the floor, his face pale, scrabbling at his holster with his good hand.

She saw the under-governor backing away towards the door, his hate-filled eyes locked with Brecht's. The other bodyguard drew his pistol in a much slower movement than his comrade and levelled it at the Inquisitor, an ugly smile slashed across his brutish face. To Elinore, this seemed anodd and strategically poor decision, as it left the guard wide open to a body shot from her bolter, which she duly prepared to take. Her finger was about to squeeze the trigger, when a series of small movements on the periphery of her left hand field of vision alerted her to new danger. Instinctively, she threw herself to the floor, seeking the only available cover – the wide-backed chair in front of her.

Sheltering behind it, she heard a soft stuttering sound of multiple impacts thudding into the chair's back. Curiously, she watched as three tiny metallic tips began to protrude through the fabric in front of her. Thin wisps of smoke curled up lazily from the velvet, accompanied by the faint acrid scent of smouldering cloth. It appeared that she'd been fired upon by some kind of needler, possibly with acid-tipped ammunition, but where was it?

Quickly, she raised her head above the ruined chair, trying to identify just where the slender darts had come from. She heard a series of small pneumatic exhalations, tiny discreet coughs almost inaudible against the sounds of combat coming from her right. She ducked down again, painfully aware that her face was exposed. The darts seemed to have been aimed low, however, and, once again, she heard a ragged pitter-patter as they embedded themselves into the chair.

Elinore scowled. Her armour was of hardened ceramite and she was a veteran of over a dozen battles. There was something faintly ridiculous, not to mention humiliating, in being in this position. She understood the value of considered action, however. While she kept her body perfectly still, her mind was racing, trying to understand what she had just glimpsed. The sounds had come from the corner of the room, a corner shrouded in shadow and appearing to contain nothing more dangerous than a squat, heavy-looking display cabinet. But there had been… an anomaly. The merest suggestion of a ripple of light. A distortion in the air where there should have been stillness. She realised that what she had glimpsed was some kind of camouflage – a holographic projection, perhaps, although one that was too perfect to be of Imperial manufacture. Alien, then. Another reason to despise Querin.

Shifting her leg to ward off the onset of an unexpected cramp, she risked a glance to her right. The bodyguard who had shot Janner was flat on his back, a slender-bladed knife jutting out of the near side of his meaty neck, sightless eyes staring up at the elegant glittering chandelier. Janner was still conscious but slumped against an antique bookcase, trying to aim his las pistol at the remaining guard, a task made more difficult by the fact that Brecht had closed with the hulking guard and was grappling with him for his gun. Even as she watched, the Inquisitor broke the guard's hold on the las pistol with deftly applied pressure to his wrist and followed up the move with a brutal headbutt. The room echoed for a moment with the harsh snapping sound of cracking cartilage and the bodyguard staggered back, hands clutched to the bloody ruin of his nose. Janner had a clear shot and he took it, punching a fist-sized crater in the man's chest. The dead guard began to topple forwards.

Elinore took this as her cue to move. She sprang from her slowly disintegrating cover and fired a burst of bolter fire into the corner of the room, leaving a nearby vase pulverised and the display cabinet incongruously unharmed. At almost precisely the same time, a brief burst of las fire shrieked out from behind the holographic camouflage, although it quickly cut off. She took a shot to the shoulder, but, although she was spun off balance and almost fell, her armour held. Blinking sweat out of her eyes, she watched the corner warily for a moment and then let out a sigh as, with a strange bulging effect, a bloodied ruined body pitched forward out of the cabinet, followed by a smaller shapeless gobbet of flesh that may once have been an arm.

She looked at the corpse of her would-be killer and then glanced across at Brecht, who was moving towards her. He took in the three bodies lying in the awkward unrehearsed poses of death and smiled grimly. "Good work, Sister." There was no sign of Querin, but the Inquisitor seemed unconcerned by his disappearance.

She tried to straighten under Brecht's approving gaze, but suddenly found that her limbs were heavy and clumsy. She swallowed as a wave of nausea rushed through her. Brecht was regarding her through narrowed eyes. He reached up to take her face in his hand, pulling her closerto him into the sunlight.

"Pupils dilating, skin clammy, loss of motor responsiveness. Damn!" Letting her go, he stalked over to the ruined chair and plucked out one of the needles, brining it up to eye level and examining it closely. "Interesting…"

"Her… leg…" Elinore heard the voice, hoarse and inscribed with pain, as if from a great distance. It took her a split second to recognise that it belonged to Achan Janner. She wanted to look down at her leg to see whatever it was that Janner had spotted, but the effort seemed to be too great and, besides, her eyesight was losing focus. She was aware, however, of Brecht bending down by her leg and bringing up another slender dart in his hand.

"Acid to compromise the armour and… what? A poison? Something bacterial? Or a toxin?" Elinore was glad Brecht was talking to himself; she suddenly found herself simply too tired to answer him.

The stinging slap of his hand against her face brought her mind sharply back into focus. Brecht was talking again.

"… a problem. There's some kind of toxin in your body. If this weapon is what I think it is, it's probably Eldar in origin, which means the toxin will likely be attempting to close down your heart or respiratory system. Or possibly both." Elinore knew she ought to be alarmed at Brecht's words, but the tiredness seemed to be growing. She swayed to the side for a moment. Brecht was rummaging in his pockets and speaking quickly now. "You haven't met our resident hunter yet, have you? Probably a bit… primitive for your refined sensibilities, Sister, but… Ah-hah!"

He produced something from his greatcoat. Elinore tried to focus on it. It looked black and shrivelled – like a lump of charcoal or perhaps a root. Brecht was pushing it against her lips. His eyes were hard, but there was a desperation behind them that made her shiver. She opened her mouth and let him push the root thing in.

"You need to chew this vigorously, Sister. It should keep your heart beating for the next ninety minutes or so. When it starts to taste of aniseed, you have about thirty seconds to spit it out or you will set in motion a bio-chemical reaction in your body that can only end when your heart explodes." His eyes were staring into hers. He let his hand fall away from her face. "Normal motor functions will be restored temporarily and your mental faculties will be mostly unimpaired." The Inquisitor paused. "I need you to track down Querin. I'll follow you in a moment. He'll be making for the top floor. Stop him. But, Sister…" He held out a las pistol in front of her for a moment and then placed it firmly in her unresisting hand. "I'd like him taken alive if possible."

Elinore was chewing the thing in her mouth mechanically now. There wasn't much of a flavour to it, but she could feel strength returning to her limbs. Her eyes narrowed as she swallowed another mouthful of juice and saliva. Moving the thing to one side with her tongue, she asked the only question she could think of.

"You said this thing in my mouth… Its effect will last for ninety minutes. What happens then?"

Brecht shrugged slightly, a gesture that was almost an apology. "You die." He flashed her a smile. "Better get started then, eh?"

She nodded quickly. Then, her bolter in her left hand and the las pistol in her right, she strode out of the room.

Thoughtfully Brecht watched the Sister of Battle leave. A dry rasping sound interrupted his train of thought and he turned his head.

"What are you laughing at?"

Janner chuckled again, despite his obvious discomfort. A stray wisp of smoke snaked upwards from the charred meat of his shoulder. His arm hung uselessly at his side.

"You like her."

Brecht frowned, as he knelt next to the injured Arbites officer. "It's not a question of 'like' or 'dislike'. She's a tool. A weapon. That's all." He pulled a thin vial out of one of his greatcoat pockets. Janner eyed it warily, but then a spasm of pain sped across his face. Once it had passed, the skin round his eyes and mouth was creased and grey.

"What's that?" he asked, hoarsely. "More jungle voodoo?"

"Nothing so exotic." Brecht unstoppered the vial and held it to the injured man's lips. Its thick murky contents seemed to contain flecks of gold that danced and whirled in the sunlight. "Just a simple painkiller… Steady! Any more of that and you'll start thinking you can fly."

Janner smiled weakly. "The Inquisition gets all the best stuff."

Grunting dismissively, Brecht straightened up and tapped the microbead at his throat, opening a short range vox channel.

"All units, this is Brecht. Command key: Die Vindictae. Squads Amethyst and Carnelian, converge on my position. Squad Basalt, arrest all House Querin staff not in the main residence and escort them to the barracks at the north end of the estate. If you encounter resistance, you are authorised to employ lethal force." He paused for a moment as the acknowledgements of the squad leaders crackled in his earpiece.

Janner was staring at him. "I thought you said you didn't want a bloodbath," he said, quietly.

Brecht shrugged. "There still might not be one, if the house guard are sensible. But the game is changing, Achan, and we must change with it."

Nodding his understanding, Janner tried to shift his position and winced as, even through the numbness brought on by Brecht's drug, a sharp pain shot through his shoulder and injured arm. "We… always knew that Querin was… hiding something…"

Brecht nodded curtly, but his attention was elsewhere. He worked his vox again. "Vernin… have the transport prepped for launch. Vox Livia and Thesk and tell them they've got two patients inbound requiring urgent attention. One of them's a priority case… xenos toxin… probably eldar… Yes, that's right… No. Tell them she must be saved… Yes…. Alright. Brecht out." With a small, distracted motion, Brecht switched the vox bead off. He sensed Janner's eyes on him.

"What?"

"You do like her."

Brecht thrust his hands into his greatcoat pockets and, for a moment, he seemed as vulnerable and fragile as a downhive beggar. He fixed Janner with a piercing stare. "How long have we known each other?"

Janner tried to shrug and then regretted it. He waited a moment for the pain, appreciably duller now, to recede. "I don't know. Eleven… maybe twelve years?"

The Inquisitor nodded and then glanced away. "I have a feeling about our good Sister Elinore…"

"The last time you had one of your 'feelings' a lot of people died."

Brecht smiled sadly. "People die all the time, Achan. It doesn't mean I'm wrong." He turned smartly on his heel and made for the door. "When Amethyst arrive, make sure Sergeant Grell stays with you. He's a good man."

Janner instinctively attempted to nod, but the action brought a gasp of pain to his lips. He glanced down at his shoulder and upper arm and grimaced. A patch of white bone was clearly visible through the torn and blackened flesh.

"My arm's a mess…"

Brecht paused in the doorway and half-turned, flashing a grin at Janner. "When all this is over, I'll get you a new one." Then, he spun smartly on his heel and stalked from the room, following the route taken by Sister Elinore.


	9. Chapter 2e

Pushing awkwardly past Fenter, his footsteps halting and uncertain, Vollex entered the room.

And stared.

It was, he realised later, the contrast that was so arresting. One half of the room was bathed in gentle light, a golden glow suffusing the room's pastel pink walls; the other was… infected with something altogether darker. Distractedly, his mind acknowledged the large double bed resting against the far wall just to his right, and it registered the elegant, tasteful furniture arranged nearby.

But he wasn't looking at them.

He was looking at the other side of the room.

He was staring at the darkness.

Growing up in the under-hive of Graltor's largest conurbation, Vollex was used to darkness, where death waited patiently for the unwary and where a multitude of sins were covered by an inky veil, preserving secrets and best forgotten truths. The darkness that swelled and pulsed in the far corner of the room was all too different.

Vollex stared and licked lips that had suddenly gone dry.

It was easier to look at the edges, rough black tendrils that throbbed with an unwholesome glistening pulsation. Vollex saw how they'd spread across the soft pink walls. Like the gnarled roots of some ancient and irredeemably corrupted tree, they seemed to plunge into the fabric of the building, disrupting its structure, warping straight lines and smooth surfaces into a twisted aggregation of broken plaster and bulging wall.

But his gaze was drawn inexorably towards the centre, where the darkness breathed and something flickered on the edge of sight, always threatening to break through into… what? Vollex couldn't say, but a secret knowledge lurked within him, a horrible suspicion that knelt at the door of his mind, picking the lock of his sanity.

He saw the squat, round plinth, its surface crusted with old blood. He saw the small human skull perched upon it. He watched, stomach churning, the slimy things crawl in and out of the pleading eye sockets. Children went missing in the outer habs all the time, so they said. A small, quiet part of him wondered which one the skull had belonged to. The rest of him was staring at the darkness.

Vollex let out a breath and wondered at how his chest ached. The air was heavy and close. It smelled of fear and blood and yearning. And death. He felt as if it were congealing around him, solidifying, holding him fast in a relentless embrace. There was a numbness on his skin and a suffocating coldness in his mind. His nose was sharp and pinched; his eyes were watering. It was hard to concentrate. He was staring at the darkness.

There was something he should be doing, surely? Something important. But that thought was distant, too vague to find definition within his freezing brain.

He was staring at the darkness and he felt it call to him – to the darkness that glittered in his eyes; to the hunger that uncoiled in his gut; to the emptiness that yawned wide in the very core of his being. Faintly, as if through a faulty auspex, he was aware of the tendrils on the walls flickering, moving, stretching languidly towards him.

Something heavy shoved against him and he whirled round instinctively, a particularly vile curse on his lips. Fenter stood mutely over him, his eyes staring and afraid. The taller man tentatively reached out his hand to Vollex's shoulder, but the under-hiver swatted it away.

"Alright," he said, sharply. "I'm alright. Just a little…" He snapped his head away sharply, convinced that he had seen something move on the periphery of his vision, but there was just the skull on its plinth, its small pits of shadow aching for a salvation that had never come. He blinked and shook his head. "Spooked…"

Vollex swallowed. "I think we've found what we want. Let's get what we came for, eh?"

He licked his lips slowly, eyes fixed on the corner of the room. But it was still now. The darkness was shadow and gloom; the streaks of black on the wall were paint or dried blood. He moved forward, approaching the plinth cautiously. There were symbols burnt into the carpet, he noticed. Strange, spiralling shapes.

He ignored them and examined the stone plinth with a practised eye. "Check the drawers by the bed," he called over his shoulder.

Knowing it was pointless to wait for a reply, he bent over the plinth, his sharp professional gaze spotting the tell-tale hairline crack of a hidden compartment and identifying the release mechanism for it a few seconds later. He reached for it quickly, sighing with a thrill of pleasure as a panel at the back of the stone artifact fell away. Grinning, he reached round behind it, resting his free hand on the plinth itself, although he was careful not to touch that part of the blood-encrusted surface on which the skull rested or the gruesome relic itself. After a moment's tentative fumbling, he drew his hand out again, clutching a stained and battered leather-bound book.

"Lovely," he breathed. And then paused. Something had changed, something in the quality of the silence that had fallen on the room. The air was sharp with the tang of ozone. Slowly, he turned round.

Fenter was sprawled on the bed, his long limbs splayed out like those of a discarded doll. Vollex couldn't tell whether he was alive or not. He didn't have the time to worry about that right now.

There was a woman standing in the doorway. No. Not standing. Floating. Hovering a few inches above the thick cream carpet. Her face was achingly beautiful and her skin was smooth and pale like alabaster. Her hair was lustrous and dark and stirred in the wake of a wind that he could not feel. Gold dripped like honey from her wrists and precious jewels sparkled on her fingers. Her dress was made of silk and was the colour of the dying sun.

But her eyes… her eyes were as blue as the summer sky and flecks of golden fire danced and played in their azure depths.

Vollex clutched the book tightly to his chest as the beautiful, terrible woman slowly turned her head to regard him. When she spoke, her voice crackled with power and thick blue cords of lightning crawled across the exposed skin of her neck and hands.

"What," she asked, "are you doing in my daughter's rooms?"

* * *

_She was running. Always running._

_Scurrying away from her father's fists. Running in the darkened alleyways that spread like inky tendrils from the ugly blot of her home. Sprinting through the dusty marketplace, dodging the grasping hands of angry traders as she took one, two, three gaijil fruit, their rinds cool and hard in her small palms._

_She heard the traders' curses sting the air behind her, but she didn't care._

_She was doing what she had to._

She was doing what she had to.

In the elegantly decorated hallway, Sister Elinore almost stumbled, as she realised the sharp taste of aniseed was flooding her mouth. So intent had she been on catching her quarry that she couldn't have said precisely when the root-thing had begun to change flavour. Hurriedly, she spat it out, glancing at it briefly as she ran past. It had turned pale and seemed to quiver on the polished floorboards, glistening wetly in the soft light. She swallowed and the taste began to subside.

She couldn't slow down. Querin was somewhere ahead of her and she had her orders. She ran, her body feeling strange to her, somehow distant. Her heart beat furiously in her chest and her skin underneath the ceramite armour was feverous with a dry heat. The sacred bolter was heavy in her left hand; the las pistol seemed as light and unreal as smoke in her right.

As she rounded a corner and saw the broad central staircase of the house stretch upwards before her, she wondered how much time she had left. She realised it didn't really matter.

She was doing what she had to.

_She was running._

_Through the twisting maze of lanes and alleyways, crouching low under the indolent gaze of the militia patrols, squeezing through the gaps between the grimy huts of the hintertown, she ran. The bright green fruit had become slippery in her hands, but she did not drop them. They had become the most precious, most real, things in her dusty, dirty world. She could not, would not, let them go._

The stairway was a bent 'y' shape, sweeping grandly up to a central landing and then branching into two narrower stairways that ran parallel to each other leading to the grandeur of the first floor. A large detailed painting covered most of the wall behind the landing. Elinore couldn't tell what its subject was and she didn't care.

She took the stairs two at a time, her blood pounding unnaturally loud in her ears. She felt as if there were a tight metal band across her chest, immovable and heavy. Drawing breath was difficult, uncomfortable.

She reached the small landing and scanned the two stairways for a moment. There was movement at the top of the left hand one and she darted forwards and then stopped. Sweat beaded her forehead, but she couldn't wipe it away. Both her hands held guns and both of them were trained on the figure at the top of the stairs.

"Stendahl Querin," she called out, her voice shaking slightly despite her best efforts to keep it even. "You are guilty of heresy and treachery."

The figure of the under-governor was a dark silhouette in the light streaming from the hallway behind him. She saw him bring his hands together once. Twice. The sound of his clapping seemed small in the space of that vast house.

"Oh, bravo," he said, irony dripping from his voice. "Bravo. Well done."

Elinore kept the weapons trained on him. Her left shoulder shivered involuntarily, but she kept her gun hand steady through an intense effort of will.

"My orders are to capture you alive, but I will not hesitate to use extreme force if you do not surrender now!"

The under-governor took a single step downwards, his eyes glittering with a cold amusement. "Is that a threat, Sister?" He chuckled. "I've never been threatened by a dead woman before."

Elinore licked her lips. Her pulse throbbed dully in her neck. Sweat dribbled thinly down her burning cheeks.

"You are now a prisoner of the Holy Inquisition," she said. "Your status as a citizen of the Imperium and the rights and privileges dependent upon it are hereby revoked."

Querin ignored her, as he took another step towards her. She could see his face now, see the cold cruel curve of his smile.

"And you are dead, Sister. You do know that, don't you?"

_She knew something was wrong the moment she stepped inside._

_The air in the dark little hovel was perfectly still as if it was holding its breath, as if it was afraid of what was waiting in the silence. She wanted to call out. She wanted to hold out the three fruit proudly to her mother. She wanted to hear her mother speak her name. She wanted to feel the love and approval in her voice._

_The hovel was silent._

_But not empty._

_Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness now. She could see the small roughly made table overturned in the centre of the earthen floor. She could see her father's chair, moth-eaten and blotched with sweat stains. She could see the hunched, squatting shape next to it. She could see…_

"_Your mother's had… an accident."_

_She knew it had been her father who had said these words, but his voice had been strange, taut and quivering like the skin of a drum after it has been struck. She stared at her mother. Her mother was lying on her back, her face hidden from her by the angle of her outstretched arm – an arm that, in the poor light of the tiny hovel, was streaked with darkness. Her father was stroking his mother absently with his large, rough hand. His hand was streaked with darkness, too._

_She took a step forward and another, all the while gazing at her mother lying on the floor. She took a third step and saw, in the weak light spilling in from the doorway behind her, her mother's face for the last sound of the hard-skinned fruit striking the compacted earth floor brought her father's head up with a sharp snapping motion. His face was indistinct in the shadows of that tiny one-room hut, but she knew the expression he was wearing. She had seen it before in those times when he stopped being her father and became something else. Distantly, she was aware of the bright green fruit rolling away into the shadows._

_The thing that wore her father's face was getting to his feet, his movements awkward and stumbling._

"_Your fault," said her father's voice. "All your fault."_

_She turned from her home and started running._

The under-governor's eyes were diamond hard as he called out, "Gamma-Kappa-Epsilon!"

As Elinore squeezed the firing stud of the pistol, a deep rumbling roar erupted from her left. Her shot went wide, as the landing trembled beneath the tread of something huge, something monstrous. She glimpsed the flash of metal through the billowing, choking dust that engulfed her.

The floor shook again. And again. She dived to her right, as a towering combat servitor, its polished chrome flecked with fragments of plaster, bore down upon her, its weapons blazing. The burst of gunfire tore up the carpet next to her as the servitor's shoulder-mounted autogun roared its cold fury. She flung herself down the stairs, rolling and tumbling, landing awkwardly as the servitor stalked after her. Suppressing a gasp of pain, she brought her bolter up and loosed off a short burst of fire that thudded into the servitor's armour-plated chest and legs. She heard the soft fizzing sound of relays and circuits shorting out, but whatever damage she had done to the machine creature seemed only to be superficial.

She pulled herself to her feet and darted to her right once more as the servitor's weaponry tracked her, its servos whirring. As well as the autogun, the servitor bristled with weaponry: its right forearm was an integrated heavy duty las carbine and its left had been replaced with a gently curving longsword. Its head seemed disproportionately tiny, perched on a torso swollen with armour and adorned with vicious spikes and hooks. Its skull seemed to be composed of burnished bronze and a golden bejewelled mask bisected its face. The skin stretched tight across the remainder of its face was a pallid grey, a grisly contrast to the conspicuous opulence of the metallic augmentation. A ruby red sensor eye, set in the half-mask face plate like the centrepiece of some jeweller's display, glowed with an inner light; its one remaining unaugmented eye was bloodshot and wept clear fluid, as it focused dispassionately upon her.

Above the sound of its internal motors, Elinore thought she heard Querin's laughter. She loosed another burst of bolter rounds, grunting with satisfaction as she saw them hit home, smashing into the thing's chest and abdomen once more. It faltered, but continued firing and, even as she threw herself down to the floor, she screamed as a lasbolt punched through the armour encasing her thigh and seared the flesh within.

She lay on her back, training the bolter on the servitor, gritting her teeth through a haze of pain.

_She was running._

_The world did not pass her in a blur, but in a series of discreet moments of crystallised time, separate and distinct from one another, dissociated: the startled, open mouth of a merchant's clerk, his robes billowing outwards as she pushed against him; the spiderweb cracks in the crumbling façade of a once-elegant hab block; the small puffs of dust kicked up by a pakko rat as it darted across her path._

_The thing that wore her father's face was chasing her, fury and an incomprehensible desire driving him on. She heard his cursing behind her like the baying of wild dogs, snatches of it becoming clear as he got closer._

"… _your fault…"_

_She vaulted over a pile of trash, the sweet scent of decay strong in her nostrils for a moment,and she stumbled as she landed._

_The father-thing's shadow lapped like a black tide at her thin legs. His snarling voice was close and cruel._

"_Someone must pay."_

_She rolled away from his lunging arms and got to her feet. An alley mouth gaped open and she dived for it desperately. Somewhere above her, even though she couldn't dare look for it, was the white stone tower. She knew where she was going and she knew she was close._

_She just had to keep running._

She inched away from the advancing servitor, trying to ignore the pain that throbbed in her thigh. She had fallen underneath the first floor hallway, she realised. She could hear Querin moving across it, his footsteps distant above her.

The servitor seemed to be having difficulty aiming its las carbine. Presumably she had damaged its internal mechanisms in some way. But its longsword flashed, cold and vicious, as it brought it up for the killing blow.

_She burst through into the plaza and kept running._

_The doors were always open, she told herself. The doors were always open._

_The father-thing was following her into the wide spaces of the assembly square, where the faithful gathered at the appointed times to hear the words of the preachers and bring their offerings and tithes. The plaza was empty today. But the doors would be open. She knew that. The doors were always open._

_The white stone tower of the Church of St Beatrice of the Veladan Wastes loomed over her and she ran, head down, heading for the darkness framed by the granite archway of the entrance portal. Her heart felt like it would burst in her chest and her arms and legs were tired. She smoothed the hair away from her face with a grimy hand and kept running. She was almost there._

_She was…_

"_Hey!"_

_She sensed the two of them standing by the doorway, but she couldn't slow down. She ran straight into one of them and felt a wild panic growing within her as strong arms took hold of hers and arrested her flight._

"_Please!" she screamed. "Let me go!"_

"_Be quiet, child!" said a voice, stern and unyielding._

"_Shush, Jernigan," said another, gentler voice. "Can't you see she's frightened?" She struggled against the strong, cool hands that held her and then their owner was bending down to look into her eyes._

_The woman was thin-faced and older than her mother had been, but her eyes were the same colour of blue. No. Not quite the same. There was the hint of grey in them – like rain clouds on a summer's day. The unmistakeable shape of the double eagle aquila was tattooed on her right cheek._

_The woman's lips were thin, but they were smiling at her._

"_What's your name, little one?"_

_She opened her mouth to reply, but –_

"_She's mine." Her father's voice, authoritative and hard, cut the air. "We've been playing a game. Now it's time to go home."_

_She couldn't turn to look at him. She imagined his hand stretched out to claim her, to take her back. She imagined his other hand, the one streaked with darkness, held behind his back._

_The woman who held her straightened. She clung to her skirts, thin fingers digging into the heavy cloth._

"_It looks like she doesn't want to go home," the woman said, mildly._

"_She's mine," said her father again. This time, a hint of uncertainty crept into his voice. "We were playing a game."_

_Huddled in the skirts of the thin-faced woman, she shuddered involuntarily. She remembered the 'games' in the darkened hovel. Remembered the voices raised in anger. Remembered the sounds of the fists striking. Remembered her mother's face._

"_Is this true?"_

_The woman was looking down at her again, brow furrowed. She didn't know. She didn't know who to believe._

_She decided, then. She would not beg or plead or cry._

"_Come back home," her father said. "Come back with papa."_

_She looked up into the woman's eyes, watching the grey clouds gather in their depths._

"_No," she said, clearly and calmly. "No. It isn't true."_

_Her father was angry now. "You stupid little girl! Do as you're told! Come back home! Come back with -"_

_But, she was looking at the woman's eyes and she saw the change in them, saw something settle there. The woman's voice cut across her father's words. "She has made a choice," she said and in her voice was strength and something else – a conviction that was total, a belief that was absolute. "She belongs to the Church now. Go your way. Do not come here again."_

_The other voice – the one belonging to the man she would come to know as Brother Jernigan – growled a protest. "What do you think you're doing?"_

_The woman's words were calm yet through them ran a thread of steel that would not be broken._

"_What I have to."_

_Brother Jernigan fell silent. She heard her father say things, but she could not remember what they were. She felt the woman's arm across her shoulder as she led her across the threshold of the cool, darkened church._

_She knew that one day she too would believe like that._

She _did _believe.

A part of her had always understood that her life was going to end in violence and pain. That didn't matter. It had never mattered. What mattered was that she died as she was meant to - that her death, as much as her life, was imbued with faith.

The servitor's sword hung above her, its flawless edge keen and hard. Above her, making his way across his comfortably carpeted floor, the heretic Querin was walking freely, a traitor's smile clinging to his lips.

She raised the bolter quickly. There wasn't time to aim or even say a prayer. The sword flashed down as she pulled the trigger, but it didn't matter.

She was doing what she had to.


	10. Chapter 2f

He woke in confusion and pain, his face raw and his chest and limbs throbbing with an insistent bone-deep ache. Bright sunlight was trying to force its way underneath his eyelids. As they were briefly prised open and the brightness of the room assaulted his vision, he grimaced. And that felt painful, too.

But he couldn't scream. He couldn't cry or shriek or wail or even whimper.

Gustav Marko Fenter had not been able to do any of those things since the day a rogue cult of the Adeptus Mechanicum had selected him for experimentation.

Since the day they had taken away his voice.

He squinted as he raised his head, trying to focus on his surroundings. Trying to remember…

The air was thick and heavy with an oppressive aroma: the ozone stink of discharging lightning, the crackling of crawling power on skin, the charred meat stench of smouldering flesh… and the delicate overlapping scents of an abundance of flowers?

Where was he? He slumped forward onto the bed on which he was lying, eyes focussing gradually. He caught sight of the blistered skin of the hand that gripped the soft cotton coverlet and felt a shiver of fear crawl down his spine.

Now he remembered.

Vollex was slumped against the far wall of the under-governor's daughter's bedroom. Even from across the room Fenter could see the smoke rising from his ruined body. Standing over the under-hiver was the woman – the burning woman with lightning in her hands and death in her eyes.

The woman who had plunged him into darkness with a flick of her finger.

Involuntarily he gripped the control unit inside his greatcoat. And paused. There was a reason Brecht sent him into the field with another operative. Sometimes it was one of the interrogators. Sometimes, like today, it was Vollex. Sometimes it was Bex. Fenter liked Bex. She had a pretty smile and she also had the decency to look at least slightly concerned when she activated the augmented and officially heretical vox unit implanted in his throat. But, he never operated the unit himself. There was a reason.

It hurt.

He had tried to explain it to Vollex using gestures and whatever happened to be lying around at the time. The closest he got was that it was like voluntarily sticking your hand in an open fire. Somehow, having someone else activate the unit and select the settings was more bearable. It was as if he could endure the pain, knowing that it originated in the will of someone else.

He reached for the buttons recessed into the bulky control unit. His fingers were shaking.

Lightning snaked across the exposed skin of the burning woman's forearms and fingers. Her hair streamed out behind her, like tendrils of shadow. Vollex moaned softly, his head lolling to one side, the smoke rising in thick curlicues in the softly scented air.

The metal of the control unit was cool beneath the dry tormented heat of his fingers. The highest setting might be enough.

He couldn't do this.

He saw the lightning building again. She was hissing something, something soft and hateful, on the other side of the room. He saw Vollex's eyes glint in the flickering light. He saw the shadows uncoiling in the corner. He felt terror wash over him in ice cold waves.

He couldn't do this.

Half-stumbling, half-falling, he got up off the bed. His legs buckled beneath him and he almost crashed to the floor, but somehow he managed to stand shakily, his hand still clutching the hard metal control unit tucked into his greatcoat like a precious treasure, like a bar of gold.

The woman was a witch, a powerful psyker. He had seen them before, but always from the sidelines. Always watching Brecht or Banacek or one of the others. Always amazed and grateful that his unique abilities qualified him only for the relatively specialised area of counter-surveillance.

He couldn't do this. There was no way.

Power was building again, its taste sharp on the thickening air. And very soon, the burning woman would unleash it again and Vollex would die and the shadows would swell and the darkness would grow and…

He couldn't do this.

He pressed the button. Pain lanced into his throat and downwards towards, but not quite reaching, his heart and lungs. His mouth jerked open – wide, wider, lips stretching and cracking, skin taut, jaws almost dislocating.

And then he screamed.

The sonic vibrations hit the burning woman and she brought her hands instinctively to her head. Lightning dripped from her fingers and she doubled up, bending down towards the scorched fabric of the desecrated carpet.

Behind her, Vollex moved, as if released from some invisible chain. Slowly, he began to crawl towards the door, the little book clutched in a red raw hand.

Fenter kept on screaming. Somewhere in the other room, a light fitting popped and fizzed. The burning woman was shaking now, her crooked body quivering uncontrollably.

Vollex was still crawling towards the door, his eyes narrowed in pain, his mouth set in a grimly determined line.

The pain was intense – a growling, spiky presence in his throat, lashing at his mind. He didn't know how long he could keep this up for. He watched, his body held rigid, as the woman slowly turned, her eyes flashing hatred and her bile-flecked lips twisted in a savage parody of a smile. Lightning was cascading from her skin like water. Or a shell. Slowly and quite deliberately, she got to her feet and stood in the path of the sound waves. After a moment or two, she smiled.

Behind her, Vollex was almost at the threshold separating the two rooms. Fenter tried not to look at him, tried not to give him away. He kept his gaze fixed on the burning woman, as she rode on the jagged forks of flickering light, gliding towards him across the scorching floor.

When she spoke, it was as if her words had been hollowed out and now an ancient evil, implacable and utterly malignant, sat in their centre.

"Were you the one?" the burning woman asked. "I heard her death shriek in the prison of my mind. Such a bright young flame." For a moment, the woman's eyes seemed normal again, almost pleading and replete with sorrow.

Fenter was in agony, tears streaming from his eyes, running in the tracks that had etched themselves around his rigid mouth. It was no good. It had all been for nothing. He had failed.

"Such a bright young flame," the woman said, almost wistfully. And then she snarled. "Was it you? Were you the one?"

Lightning as thick as his arms lashed out against him, melting his skin and charring his flesh, reducing the control unit to hot slag, setting the greatcoat on fire. He felt it snake around him, coiling around his body like a thick crackling rope. He felt it lift him off the floor, even as it was searing his tortured flesh.

He was dead. He knew that. So much agony. He wanted to pray. He wanted to ask the Emperor for forgiveness, for mercy, for release.

But he couldn't do it.

The woman drew him to her till he could see the madness and the thundering, raging darkness in her eyes. He could smell her perfume, festering and decaying underneath the ozone stink of the warp unleashed.

"I offer you to the night and the hunger," she said, and he could feel the unbearable heat of her breath on his blistered face.

And, with a casual flick of her mind, she threw him into the corner, where the darkness waited and the shadows swallowed him whole.

* * *

"Bravo, bravo."

She thought she could hear Querin's sardonic tones, muffled by the roar of the bolter. She had aimed past the looming shape of the combat servitor, pumping a burst of automatic fire into the ceiling – just where she judged the under-governor to be moving on the first floor landing. The wolfish curve of his smile had imprinted itself on her mind. She imagined that smile crumpling into agony and terror. As victories went, it was small and spiteful, but it would have to do.

"Omega-alpha-pi."

Now there would be pain. She had seen combat servitors in action before. The longsword would strike her armour with enough force that its keen edge would break it open, piercing the flesh beneath. But she kept firing, the bolts chewing up the elaborate plasterwork of the ceiling and piercing the wooden joists and floorboards above.

The sword swept down. And glanced off her armour, the force behind it no more than if it had been wielded by a child. She stopped firing and stared at the servitor. The motion of the downward stroke had brought its face mere inches from her own. It was staring back at her, its augmetic eye glowing dully, its bloodshot one weeping steadily. The sword trembled slightly at the end of its arm.

Hastily Elinore scrambled away from it and groped for a wall, by which she could haul herself to her feet. Dust choked her momentarily and she coughed, hoarsely. Shakily, heart pounding, she brought the bolter up once more. She had no idea what had caused the servitor to pause in its attack, but she was determined to take the opportunity presented to her.

Then, she realised she was not alone. A figure, tall and menacing, loomed out of a fog of wood chips and plaster dust. Heart thudding an irregular tattoo in her chest, she whipped the bolter round to cover it, finger tightening on the trigger.

"Nice shooting," said Inquisitor Brecht, glancing up at the ruined ceiling.

He looked faintly ridiculous, coated in a thin layer of dust, hair speckled with fragments of plaster. With slow deliberate steps, he moved to the servitor and seemed to admire it, circling it slowly and brushing some dust off its bronze breastplate.

"I was wondering when you'd turn up," he murmured, apparently addressing the motionless machine-creature. He straightened abruptly. "Alpha-delta-alpha. Desist and stand down."

With a steadily decreasing whine, the servitor stood to attention and then seemed to deactivate, its augmetic eye growing dim.

Elinore stared at it and then at Brecht, finally lowering her bolter, as she realised the danger had passed – at least for the moment. The last phrases Brecht had uttered had been in Querin's silky tones.

"How… how did you…" She coughed again, the grit in the air catching in her throat. She tried to wave away the dust with her free hand and almost fell, as pain lanced through her leg. Her heart continued to thump strangely; a horrible image of it breaking free of her body rose unbidden to her mind.

_"You die."_

Such a simple statement. How long did she have left?

Pain spasmed in her thigh again and she reached for a pouch on her belt, fingers fumbling with the clasp. She kept her eyes fixed on it steadily, trying to avoid looking at the red raw gouge in her ceramite-encased thigh. Or at least keep its glistening edges out of focus.

"Voice pattern recognition." Brecht was talking again, walking – almost strolling, it seemed – across to her. "Very expensive. Very difficult to subvert." He smiled at her. "Unless you're me."

Elinore stared at him for a moment. He was standing in front of her, smiling his boyish smile, but she wasn't fooled for an instant. It seemed to her that she was finally beginning to understand what he really was. She saw his power, a power that, up till now, he had taken great pains to hide. But, she saw it now in the set of his shoulders and the thin lines about his twinkling eyes and smiling mouth. She felt a strange sense of understanding starting to dawn on her, its feeble rays creeping up over the horizon of her ignorance. She glimpsed in his face a fleeting impression of…

"Allow me."

Brecht reached for the pouch on her belt, unclasping it with a swift, economical motion and, still smiling, withdrew its contents. Their fingers brushed briefly as he placed the two small pills into Elinore's hand. He nodded.

"Good idea. That las wound looks deep."

She nodded ruefully. "It certainly feels it." How long do I have left? She refused to ask the question her mind was screaming.

She was about to bring the painkillers to her mouth, when a spot of red fell from the ruined ceiling, a solitary crimson rain drop that splashed on Brecht's hand.

The Inquisitor looked up and then back at Elinore, one eyebrow raised.

"Very nice shooting."

He turned and raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

"Come on, Sister! Let's have a word with the under-governor while he's still with us."

_How long do I have left?_

The words caught in her throat, choked by the dust and something else, perhaps. A simple resignation to the fate the Emperor had decreed for her? Or something else?

Popping the pills in her mouth, Elinore pushed herself away from the wall and limped determinedly after him.


	11. Chapter 2g

Ripped apart by the barrage of bolter rounds from below, the first floor landing was a mess. And so was Under-governor Querin's body.

Most of the bolts had exploded in the wooden flooring or the heavy support timbers crisscrossing the space below them. Wide ragged holes in the floor bore mute testimony to their destructive power. A blizzard of wood splinters had erupted from their impact, shredding flesh and piercing skin as effectively as a fusillade of grapeshot.

Querin's legs looked as if they'd been mauled by a wild animal. The under-governor was sprawled against the far wall, blood seeping from his lacerated limbs, a number of large wooden splinters protruding from his flesh.

At first glance, Elinore assumed the under-governor was dead, but, on closer inspection, she realised that he was still breathing, albeit in a very shallow manner. He appeared to be unconscious, his eyes closed.

Brecht hopped over a hole in the floor and savagely kicked him into wakefulness.

"Let's talk," the Inquisitor said, ignoring the pained gasp and low moaning that followed it. He crouched down beside the under-governor, bringing up his hand to administer a stinging slap to

Querin's drained, ashen face. "Do pay attention," he snapped. "This is important."

Eyes opening and glittering with undisguised hatred, Querin muttered something that Elinore didn't quite catch. Brecht snorted derisively and slapped him again.

"Try to be civil," Brecht said. "Let's start with what I now know. I say 'now know', because your behaviour in the last half hour or so has been quite revealing and I've come to understand a number of things I hadn't considered before. Now…" His voice trailed off and he glanced up at Elinore, his brown eyes narrowing. "Can you smell flowers?"

Shaking his head before Elinore had a chance to respond, he returned to Querin. "Before I met you, I was willing to entertain the possibility that, although you knew about your daughter's heretical activities, you were not yourself directly involved. You were… protecting her, yes?" He pursed his lips, thoughtfully. "That would be understandable, although still treasonable. Family bonds are powerful. Very powerful. But, downstairs just now, we were discussing your daughter and you were acting. Almost as if you didn't care about her or… No."

Brecht straightened up and glared down at the under-governor's shattered body. "No. You cared about her, but you cared about something else more. Or some_one_ else…" He put his hands in his pockets and frowned. His next words came slowly, almost as if they were being dragged out of his being. "You used the cult. They were a visible target. Obvious. Too obvious, really. And your daughter was… what? Monitoring them? A sop to them? What did she give them, I wonder? What did they give to you? What was the reason for their existence?"

A harsh rattling sound broke the intervening silence. It took Elinore a moment to realise that Querin was laughing. Blood flecked the under-governor's lips. His voice was a hoarse whisper.

"You'll get… no answers… from me…"

Brecht nodded. "And I wouldn't believe them if I did." He paused. "You know, I really _can_ smell flowers…"

He half-turned towards the stairs that led up to the second floor, gazing up, brow furrowed. He whirled back sharply; his eyes seemed to bore into Querin's and, for the first time, the undergovernor looked uncertain.

"_You_ are the cult. Not those gibbering lunatics at the compound. You, your daughter and… your wife." He said it with an air of finality. "The last piece of the puzzle. The exotic noblewoman, glamorous and beautiful and utterly corrupted. Hiding in plain sight." He bent low now, bringing hisface close to the politician's tortured eyes. "And she's powerful, isn't she? No low-level witch-waif, this. Oh, no..."

Elinore sniffed and looked around her. Beneath the smell of cordite and dust, there _was _something. A hint of roses; the delicate scent of lavender. Brecht glanced at her and then turned back to Querin, straightening slowly.

"And she's here, isn't she? My informant said she was sequestered at the villa in Farramond, but she's here, which means..." A slow grin spread itself across the Inquisitor's features. "You think you've set a trap for me."

From somewhere above them, a faint crackling, snapping sound could be heard. Brecht looked up. "The warp..." he whispered.

The rattling sounded again. Querin's smile was a grotesque rictus, a crimson crescent in a bone pale face. "Too late…" he wheezed. "Too late…"

But, Brecht was already bounding up the stairs, shouting over his shoulder. "Follow me up after you've executed him, Sister. I have no need of him now."

Elinore felt the weight of the bolter in her hand. Querin's laughter grated in her ears; her blood thumped painfully in her veins. She stared at him, dispassionately, the scent of flowers in her nostrils, thinking of the darkness in his eyes, of the poison in her blood, of the certainty in her heart.

Querin was still laughing as she brought the bolter up and pulled the trigger.

* * *

Brecht was waiting for her outside a door leading to one of the residential suites. It was shut and, as she neared it, she seemed to see intermittent sparks of blue light pepper its varnished surface. She wiped a hand across her eyes, grimly aware of the growing pain in her chest, despite the powerful analgesics she'd just taken. But the tiny flickering lights remained.

She looked at Brecht. "What are they?"

Brecht answered with a question of his own. "Could you pass me the holy water you're carrying in the third pouch on your belt, Sister?" The scar on his cheek stretched a little as he smiled at her.

Elinore did as the Inquisitor asked, pleased that her hands were steadier than they had been a moment ago. The sparkling crystal vial she handed to Brecht contained a small volume of water from the blessed shrine to Saint Palagian on Metexes III, an agri-world she had visited some five years ago. The water had been a reward for the completion of an arduous and complex mission. A small part of her regretted that she would no longer be able to carry it at her waist, but she gave it to the Inquisitor promptly with no sign of reluctance.

Nodding his thanks, Brecht took the vial from her and muttered a litany over it, whose words were unfamiliar to her. With a deft motion of his thumb, he unstoppered it and dripped its contents over the door, paying particular attention to the area around the handle.

Elinore was unsurprised to see wisps of smoke curl upwards from the patches where the water had touched the wood. The sharp scent of lilies drifted outwards from it.

"Flowers again," she murmured.

The Inquisitor was staring intently at the door. "Warpsign. Unusual, but not unheard of." He handed her the empty vial, indicating it with a sharp nod. "That's a good vintage, Sister. Saint Palagian must have known a thing or two. The Emperor's blessing is particularly strong." He glanced up at Elinore and smiled apologetically, noting her uncertain expression. "No disrespect intended."

Elinore shook her head. "I was going to ask how you knew about my undertaking to Metexes III, but..."

Brecht was grinning. "Come, come, Sister. It's my job to know things. Now, then." He straightened up. "A prayer might be appropriate here. The under-governor's wife – well, I suppose that should be 'widow', really – will be a formidable enemy. These rooms have been consecrated to the Ruinous Powers, the doorway charged with barring our entry. But we have a holy purpose, Sister. We must not be denied."

Elinore nodded and began to recite the Prayer of Righteous Ire Unending. Brecht drew an ornately-decorated bolt pistol from his pocket and brought it to his lips.

"_O Immortal and Only Wise God, Protector and Shield of Mankind…"_

He placed his hand on the door handle and turned it firmly, pushing the door open.

"_Grant us, thy servants, a portion of thy wrath, that the traitor and godless…"_

The heavy wood sighed open and she caught a glimpse of the room beyond: scattered furniture, expensive, elaborate, effete.

"… _the alien and heretic, the daemon and unholy shall be crushed…"_

She followed Brecht in, the words of the prayer lending strength to her limbs and a cold implacable anger to her soul.

"… _and dismayed, defeated and brought low, overwhelmed and…"_

The room was full of light, motes of dust dancing in soft beams of radiance streaming in from the skylight set high in the roof. The light limned the furniture with a patina of hazy gold. And it picked out a dark, quivering thing, lying in the shadow of a nearby armchair.

"… _annihilated by the glorious fire of your eternal anger."_

Elinore realised with a shock that it was Vollex, his broken body curled in on itself in a foetal ball, shaking and shivering, something clutched protectively to his chest. The words almost faltered, but, with an effort of will, she maintained their steady rhythm, ignoring the unease growing inside her, keeping her mind focused on the holy litany.

"_Make me your instrument of wrath…"_

Because, as well as the warm, soothing light, there was shadow and darkness too. The doorway set in the far wall of the room was open. It obviously led to a further room, probably a bedroom. But, Elinore couldn't see it. There was just a rectangle of darkness. A perfect, utter blackness. An open maw, waiting.

"_Make me the voice of your rebuke…"_

The darkness rippled, like the shivering meniscus of a soot-black lake. Wisps of shadow spilled over the edges of the doorway, clinging greasily to the pale walls.

"_Make me the channel of your holy judgement…"_

Something was coming. Heart thudding loudly in her chest, Elinore raised the bolter, her words a challenge to the encroaching dark.

"_Make me the rage; make me the fire; make me the vessel of your righteous ire unending."_

A form, roughly human, strode from the blackness. Elinore saw that it was – or might once have been – a woman, long dark hair shrouding her bowed head like a dirty halo, lightning crackling and spitting at her fingertips.

"_So Let It Be."_

She and Brecht opened fire at the same time. A flurry of bolts sped outwards from their roaring weapons, but the woman had raised her head and she was smiling, her eyes glistening blackly like the crudest of oils. The bolts sped towards the witch, but appeared to be deflected by some unseen barrier. Or absorbed. Only puffs of steam marked their passing.

The vari-coloured fluttering of tiny wings caught Elinore's attention and she saw a butterfly drift over to the shuddering Vollex for a moment and then fade away into the warm air. A fat, loathsome slug near the witch-woman's feet dissolved into a glittering stain on the carpet.

"Damn," muttered Brecht, returning the bolter to his pocket. "This is going to…"

Lightning flashed in the room and a huge weight slammed into her chest, knocking her down. Her limbs jerked and twitched; her heart stopped. And started again, beating frantically as if to make up for its instant of inaction. She was sprawled on her back, looking up at the skylight. The holy aquila that hung on a pendant around her neck was red hot against the skin of her chest. The bolter was still in her hand, but her fingers were numb and its weight was distant, unreal.

She began to struggle to her knees. Another flash. Another booming impact. Pain crawled across her skin, digging a multitude of tiny fingers into her flesh. She screwed her eyes tight and felt a flash of shame as she screamed in agony. The scent of singed hair drifted into her nostrils. Her ears were ringing. Brecht's voice was hollow and strange, impossibly faint.

"Leave her, damn you! Face me, witch!"

She opened her eyes again, focusing on her hands and the carpet beneath them. There seemed to be a light dusting of white granules beneath her fingers. She dug them into the carpet; it was cold and brittle in her grasp.

The frost melted. A shadow fell across her. The witch-woman was burning with corrupted fire, an oppressive heat emanating from her in wave upon wave. Elinore gulped at the thick air desperately.

"You're the one." The words were breathy, infused with a malignant sense of triumph.

Elinore struggled to raise her head, neck muscles straining, heart thumping an insane syncopated rhythm in her chest. The bolter. Where was the bolter?

"I can see…" The softness of the witch-woman's voice filled her ears and underneath it… something else. Something lurking. Something dark. "I can see the blood on you. So much blood…

My pretty. My pretty Arielle. My pretty pretty pretty…" The darkness bubbled up between the gaps in her words. It caught in the witch-woman's throat and then found voice in a mad, tremulous laughter that spilled out into the room, like ordure into a cistern.

Scrabbling, Elinore finally felt the bolter's grip through numb fingers, remembered the sacred scripture engraved there.

_Eternal Damnation Is The Fate Of The Witch._

With an immense effort of will, she forced her aching muscles to grasp the weapon, raising it and her head at the same time.

Philomena de Souza Querin was staring down at her, shadows rippling across her face as if she were underwater. Her hair streamed out around her and her eyes, framed by exquisitely long lashes, were ovals of perfect darkness. She raised her hand, just as Elinore fired.

The impact of the bolter round rocked the witch back on her heels and the bolt of lightning that screamed from her fingers glanced off Elinore's shoulder guard, unbalancing her. Elinore saw that the bolt had left the witch unharmed. She struggled to aim the weapon again, but her arm had gone dead and sweat was trickling relentlessly into her eyes.

The witch was smiling. Her teeth were perfect and white; her lips were blood red.

She raised her hand again.

And stopped.

For a moment, Elinore thought that time itself had ground to a halt, but the sound of her ragged breathing and the wild beating of her heart convinced her otherwise. She shivered in the warm sunlight. There was a thin crust of frost on her hands and armour. She glanced across at Brecht and her breath caught coldly in her throat.

For, this was what she had glimpsed just a few moments ago in the hallway. Brecht stood, legs slightly apart, his left arm outstretched in an imperious gesture of absolute power, his face twisted into the cruellest, most savage snarl she could possibly imagine.

He spoke and his voice was a thundering roar, every word saturated with a cold and indomitable authority.

"Face me, witch! Face me!"

Slowly, inch by inch, the witch-woman moved, her dark eyes glittering with a furious hatred. Sweat stood out on Brecht's forehead and the temperature in the room plummeted. Frost powdered furniture like confectioner's sugar, magical, unreal.

The witch lashed out with cobalt blasts of lightning; Brecht's eyes narrowed and the lightning split and streamed around him, obliterating a nearby chair in a hail of splintered wood. A wind whipped up from nowhere, lashing at the witch-woman's legs, unbalancing her and almost toppling her over. Brecht took the opportunity to move forwards, his face a grotesque mask of concentration and revulsion. The air crackled with power and the stench of dying roses filled the room.

Elinore's body was racked with pain. Her skin was scorched and slick with sweat; her arm hung uselessly at her side. Slowly, painfully, she reached over with her good hand and tried to pluck the bolter out of the other.

The witch threw another blast of snapping, crackling lightning at Brecht; it flared against his chest but he seemed unaffected. His face was drenched in sweat, despite the ice that crunched under his feet, as he moved to close the gap with her.

"Elinore…" he gasped. "You must… make the.. . Shot…"

Lightning flared and exploded from the witch's wrists as the Inquisitor grasped them, trying to force them high above her head. She writhed and twisted in his grip, her eyes flashing with fury. Angrily she screamed, a howling, painful shriek, rising and rising in pitch, growing in power. Brecht's eyes screwed tight shut and his mouth was contorted in agony, but he would not release her.

Power throbbed between them, a pulsing furious incandescence. The witch's eyes were wide open, as black as tar. Smoke billowed from her clothing. The cloying scent of flowers filled the air, mingling with the smell of charring flesh and smouldering cloth, forcing Elinore to cough and splutter.

She prised the bolter from her dead hand and fumbled with it, gripping it uncertainly in her other hand. She tried to calm her breathing, tried to focus.

"Philomena…" gasped Brecht, his voice thick with pain. "No…"

Elinore raised the bolter calmly, even as her mind raced. Shooting hadn't worked before. What made Brecht think it would work now?

Power sucked hungrily at Brecht's hands; his face was haggard and pale.

"Philomena…" he said again, but there was something different about his voice.

Something… familiar…

She trusted him. That realisation gave her strength. Deliberately and slowly, in spite of the thundering staccato of her heart, in spite of the taste of hot blood in her mouth, she sighted along the barrel of the bolter.

"Philomena…" Brecht's voice again. But not Brecht's. "Philomena. Philomena, my love…"

Querin's.

Elinore saw it happen. The darkness bled from the witch's eyes. The rectangle of blackness in the open doorway behind her flickered and vanished, revealing the devastated bedroom beyond it.

Philomena de Souza Querin stared at Brecht, wonderingly, her beautiful blue eyes clear and quivering with unshed tears.

"Stendahl?" Her voice trembled, tiny and fragile in the ruined room.

Brecht forced a smile onto his ashen face. "Yes, my love," he said in her dead husband's voice. "My dear Philomena…"

Elinore squeezed the trigger, felt the kick of the recoil, but knew her aim had been true. She had seen the witch's face in profile as if at the end of a shadowy tunnel, the faint beginnings of a smile blossoming on her mouth.

And then it was gone. Lost in the scarlet ruin of her exploded head, drowned in a tide of blood and matter.

She heard Brecht's shout.

"Down, sister!"

And a vast, crashing wave of raw warp energy, violent and terrible, rushed remorselessly towards her, bludgeoning her to the floor and bringing with it a suffocating blanket of cold oblivion


	12. Interlude 2

**Interlude 2**

The desert has been smothered by night. He is aware of the existence of the pinprick stars in the inky darkness, but the light of his chambers reflected against the reinforced glass of the vast panoramic window ensures he cannot see them.

All he can see, as he gazes futilely outwards, is the pale and imperfect reflection of his own face. And it is grave, pinched with tiredness and the merciless weight of responsibility. Slowly, he turns away, back to the maple wood desk. Back to the incontrovertible evidence of his failing powers. Back to the horrible sense of things slipping away…

The vox unit on the desk hisses and splutters for a moment.

"Commander Kirrim is here, my lord."

The disembodied voice is as flat and unemotional as a servitor's. With a weary sigh, Gerellian Brossus Heironymus Velm, Warden of the Great Sand Sea, High Praeceptor of Hive 13 and Lord Marshall of the East Sector Companies, sinks into his plushly upholstered chair and leans forward to answer.

"Send him in, Bont," he says, his voice as gritty as the wind that swirls through the gantry towers half a mile below him. "Send him in."

A pause and then the soft pneumatic hiss of the grand doors opening slowly.

"My lord."

Commander Francisco Oswald Kirrim is a broad-shouldered bulldozer of a man, his face pitted as if it has been subject to its own personal meteor shower. His uniform is spotless and glittering, the sleek cloak that sweeps down from his shoulders composed of innumerable scales taken from the long extinct sandsharks, nocturnal predators that prowled the Great Wastes centuries past. A thin sprouting of dark stubble peppers his scalp. Painted a vivid cobalt blue and decorated with gold filigree, his helm of office nestles in the crook of his arm.

He bows low and straightens. Velm waves the commander to sit before the desk and allows a tired smile a brief visit on his face.

"It is good to see you, Francisco." Velm pauses, his eyes hooded for a moment. He wonders just how far he can trust the man sat before him. He sighs, quietly. In the end, it doesn't really matter. He hasn't got a choice. "We have a problem. In fact, we may have more than one."

Kirrim frowns, but does not speak, confident that the man with overall responsibility for the vast teeming hive beneath them will reveal his secrets in good time. He rests his arm on the ceremonial helmet, which in turn rests on his lap. His green eyes are clear, expectant.

"The latest production figures have been collated and they are… troubling."

"I've seen the memoranda. A two percent fall in output is hardly disastrous, my lord. I seem to remember…"

Velm is laughing, not an entirely pleasant sound. "Truly, the ways of the Administratum are wonderful to behold. The two percent figure is accurate, Francisco, but it is based on the last fiscal cycle. The short term news is much more disconcerting." He sits back, glancing briefly at one of the dataslates on the desk. "Eight point four percent in the last two months." He leans forward again. "If output continues to fall at the current rate, we will be running at three quarters capacity by the end of the year. And you will be working for a new High Praeceptor."

Kirrim accepts this without comment. The Imperium of Mankind is a vast, lumbering machine; its wheels grind slowly and sometimes they seem not to grind at all, but when a man such as Velm is deemed to have failed in his sworn duty, those wheels will grind remorselessly and violently, leaving nothing but brokenness and ruin in their tracks. Both men understand this truth.

Sighing, the commander speaks. "I know what you're going to ask me and there's nothing. Nothing that would explain a shortfall of this kind. Morale amongst the work gangs is reasonably good. We've just had a holy day, remember? The preachers and priests in the lower habs have performed their duties well. There's always trouble in the underhive, of course, but nothing that would directly affect production on the scale you're talking about. Even the feud between House Gujik and the Spider Guild has died down in recent weeks. I…" He shrugs his broad shoulders, awkwardly. "I just don't know."

The Warden of the Great Sand Sea scowls. "That's not good enough. I want patrols strengthened in the habs and I want the permanent guard doubled at the major refineries. Any irregularity, no matter how trivial, is to be reported to me. Do you understand?"

"Yes, my lord."

Velm sighs and brings his hand to his forehead wearily. "It is important we have answers, Francisco. There is an Arbites vessel inbound to this facility. It is due to arrive soon. The Judge onboard it will want answers and I must provide them." He places his hand flat on the maple wood desk, as if it can somehow lend him a little of its solidity, its permanence. "You are dismissed, Commander. Go in the Emperor's grace."

Kirrim rises and turns, but then pauses, looking back at the grey-haired man in his smartly-pressed uniform and gold brocade.

"There is one thing, but it's so insignificant…" Velm stares at him and he continues, self-consciously. "One or two sectors are reporting some unusual deaths in the lower levels. Only a handful at the moment, but…" He shrugs. "My officers are telling me that the locals are gossiping about… dustwings."

Velm gives his reaction with a sharp snorting sound. "Dustwings are fairy tales, Kirrim, stories to frighten younglings. They're as dead as the sandsharks whose skins you wear on your back." He thinks. "Still, look into it, all the same." He smiles, sadly. "At present, I'm desperate enough to chase even a fairy tale."

Kirrim bows once more and leaves, his gait brisk and purposeful.

Behind him, the Warden of the Great Sand Sea returns to the scattered data slates and parchments on his desk, seeking some clue, some scrap of information that will save him.


	13. Chapter 3a

**For those who have been keeping up with this, thank you for your patience and interest. I had a couple of reviews, one of which mentioned issues of style - sentence length etc - and, although I wouldn't say those issues have entirely been dealt with, I do think the story gets better told as it goes along. I'll try to update more regularly over the next few weeks. Thanks again for reading.**

**Chapter 3**

"No, _three _units of blood plasma!"

"I need a medicae-servitor _now_, dammit!"

"By the throne, if we don't stabilise the palpitations we're going to lose her…"

Brecht strode into the medical unit of the Hole and was oddly gratified to find that his arrival had been entirely unnoticed. White-suited medicae technicians bustled around their patients, some scurrying to nearby dispensary servitors, others hunched over the three pallets on which Sister Elinore, Vollex and Achan Janner lay. Moving with almost supernatural calm, a handful of medicae-servitors negotiated the chaos, their slender steel and brass limbs gleaming under the harsh lighting.

"For the Emperor's sake, get this bloody thing off me!"

Smiling grimly, Brecht made his way to the source of the outburst. Achan Janner was being attended by an agitated-looking orderly and a medicae-servitor who was holding the Arbites officer down. Janner was proving to be a less than co-operative patient.

"Is there a problem, Sister?"

Looking up with something approaching relief, Sister Hospitaller Livia flicked her fringe from her face with a delicate finger and grimaced.

"Not if Arbitrator Janner would actually listen to what his very experienced medicae is trying to tell him." She shot Janner a fierce glare and glanced back at the Inquisitor.

The tough Arbites officer looked somehow pathetic and frail as he turned imploring eyes to Brecht. "Tell her, my lord. She's talking about taking the arm off at the shoulder. I mean, Emperor, can't I get a second opinion?"

The medicae-servitor's internal mechanisms hummed softly. Brecht shrugged apologetically and pursed his lips. "Sister?"

Sighing, Livia attempted to explain. "The las bolt has not just severed a nerve cluster in the upper arm. It virtually obliterated it. For an augmetic limb to take, there needs to be at least some sense of neural control within the area of the host body that will be in actual contact with it." She took a plastic stylus and drew a crude line on Janner's exposed shoulder. "And that's here." She gazed at Janner, her pale blue eyes wide and trembling in the brightness of the medicae suite. "I'm sorry, Arbitrator. It will require a longer period of acclimatisation, but it's the only sensible course of action."

Brecht nodded. "Then, do it." He raised a hand to forestall Janner's protests. "No, Achan. She's right. I told you I'd get you a new arm and I meant it. We'll talk about augmetics later. Just get as much rest as you can in the meantime."

Accepting defeat, Janner slumped back onto the pallet, his face pale and drawn. "Emperor save me," he muttered.

Regarding the Arbites officer sympathetically for a moment, Brecht gradually became aware of Livia's gaze. He frowned.

"What is it?"

"You're hurt." It was a statement of fact. "Take off your coat." And that wasn't a suggestion.

Brecht attempted to wave away her concern. "I'm fine."

Livia's eyes narrowed. "No. You're not. You appear to have bled quite a bit for a start."

He sighed, involuntarily bringing his hand to his face. "It's not mine." He looked at the redness on his hand and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger, his eyes distant.

From his position on the bed, Janner chuckled darkly. "She's right. You look like hell. And you're covered in blood."

Brecht scowled. "It's not mine."

"Inquisitor, take off your coat." Livia was looking at him sternly. Her hand was outstretched, expectant. "I won't ask again."

Letting out an explosive, exasperated breath, Brecht did as he was told. It was only as he took his left arm out of its sleeve and handed the coat to the Hospitaller that he realised the coat was torn and his forearm was actually quite tender. Looking down, he saw the arm of his shirt was crimson and damp.

"Damn," he said, surprised.

With a practised business-like movement, Livia cut the sleeve away with a pair of surgical scissors. There was a long, shallow gash in the meat of the forearm. It glistened under the bright lighting and there were what looked to be tiny fragments of wood embedded round its edges.

"Not fine," said Livia, her eyes reproachful. She called the medicae-servitor over and took a small glass jar of sterile ointment, prepared in an environment of spiritual and medical purity, from a recessed panel in its side. Methodically and scrupulously, she began to clean the edges of the wound.

"What happened to you up there?" Janner was looking at Brecht curiously. "There was one hell of an explosion a few minutes after you left me. I saw the house on the way back to the shuttle. The whole top floor looked like it had blown out. How in the Emperor's name did you survive that?"

Brecht sucked in a breath as Livia probed into the wound itself. "I… I don't know," he said.

_A wave of pulsing energy. Air the colour of midnight. And then the colour of old blood. And then…_

_Elinore kneeling, eyes open but unseeing. Thunder crashing in the tiny room. Wood splintering, the floor bucking beneath him._

_Pain._

_Thunder._

_Light._

_Light? That had been unexpected. A soft, golden radiance. Like sunlight. No. Now brighter than the sun. Searing his eyes. He had thought he would go blind with the splendour of it. The glory._

_Elinore._

_Elinore kneeling._

_Elinore kneeling in the light, eyes open. Eyes wide wide open._

He glanced back at Janner, uncertainly. "Honestly," he said. He looked around him, aware of Livia's touch upon his arm only distantly.

"How is she?" he asked, softly. "Where is she?"

Livia looked up, her heart-shaped face serious. "She is being attended to now, my lord. Medicae-investigator Thesk has expressed gratitude to the Emperor that she's still alive."

"The poison?"

"Has yet to be cleansed from her body. She is simply too weak to undergo the prescribed procedures for blood cleaning and fortification. The medicae-investigator has administered our strongest anti-toxin." She looked away, reaching for a needle and thread from the nearby medicae-servitor. When she spoke again, she did not meet the Inquisitor's gaze, preferring to bend over his arm, scrutinising it.

"By rights," she said, quietly, "Sister Elinore should be dead."

Brecht was still digesting this information when the gleaming white double doors to the medical section swung open again. A tall, thin young man in investigator's robes entered, his sharp-boned face swivelling on a narrow neck, complete with unusually prominent Adam's apple. After a moment or two of searching the busy room, the newcomer spotted the Inquisitor and hurriedly made his way towards him.

He stumbled to a halt and bowed low. When he straightened, his eyes, already large, widened still further.

"My lord," he said, reverently. "You are hurt!"

Brecht glanced at Livia, who was still examining his outstretched arm, and then back at the young acolyte, his eyes hard. "Obviously."

The investigator swallowed, nervously. "The blood… on your face, my lord…"

"It's. Not. Mine."

Needle held in one hand and surgical thread in the other, Sister Livia looked up at the acolyte testily. "I'd get on with delivering whatever message you have to bring, if I were you. At this moment, I simply don't have the time to attend to another patient."

The young man stared at Livia for a moment. His cheeks coloured. "Erm… quite. Yes." He redirected his attention to the Inquisitor, whose face had assumed a glacial inscrutability. "It's Archdeacon Devenor, my lord. He requests an audience at your earliest convenience." He bowed low again.

Brecht watched him silently. When he eventually spoke, his words were enunciated with almost mathematical precision and a disconcerting lack of emotion. "Please convey this message to Archdeacon Devenor. Tell him that he is an incompetent, credulous and covetous cretin, whose negligence and avarice have cost this planet dearly and have brought it measurably closer to heresy and ruin. Tell him that I personally will relieve him of his holy sceptre of office and insert it – owww!"

Livia was hunched over his arm now, guiding the needle expertly in and out of his skin. "This will probably sting a little," she murmured, distractedly.

Brecht sighed and glared at the acolyte. "What's your name again?"

The acolyte seemed to have trouble remembering. "Erm… Weil, my lord."

"Simon Dieter Weil? One of Interrogator Dranguille's lot?"

"Y-yes, my lord."

Pursing his lips thoughtfully, Brecht nodded. "Alright. Tell Devenor I will visit him later this afternoon." Gratefully, Weil turned to go, but Brecht hadn't finished. "And tell Vivienne I want to see her in my chambers in half an hour. I've got a job for her."

Bowing nervously once more, the investigator made his way smartly to the door and left. Brecht watched him go.

Glancing around the room once more, he found the pallet on which the unmoving form of Sister Elinore lay. A gaggle of medicae staff, led by the silver-haired Thesk, thronged around her, administering medicine and salve and performing scores of other arcane tasks. As Livia continued her work on his arm, he stared at the body of the Sister of Battle intently, his mouth moving to mutter the words of a quiet prayer over and over again.

* * *

Varl was hunting when the Call went out, clear and piercing in his mind. He understood immediately what had happened and the implications of that psychic emanation, stridently insistent, throbbing with the colours of pain and death, brought him up sharply.

The witch was dead. The sacred chalice was emptied. Her mind would sing no more.

The urge to rend something, anything, to feel the hot helpless spasm of dying flesh in his hands, to feel the scalding splash of blood upon his skin, was almost too much. With an immense effort of will, he ducked into an alleyway and waited for the bloodlust to subside, become more manageable.

Brachius City was his hunting ground and, at this hour of the morning, the city was only just coming to life. Phrysia Secundus was not, after all, some bustling over-populated hive world. Its citizens slept, woke and worked in response to ancient rhythms established when Terra had not been 'Holy', when humans had not overreached themselves in thinking they could tame the night.

With long, measured gulps of air, Varl calmed himself, pressing his back into the coolness of the crudely plastered wall behind him. His claws scraped gently against the wall's hard, rough surface and he shuddered, revelling in the sensation. For a moment, he closed his eyes and sniffed the air. Through long practice, he could filter out most of the conflicting smells of human refuse and tenacious weed-plants, of the stray animals that lurked furtively in the shadows, of the earth and brick and oil-slicked tarmac, of the sweating, insignificant humans who made their way, drone-like, through the city's streets. He was seeking one particular scent.

There!

A few hundred metres away, her body instinctively beginning to recognise what her dull mind could not, his prey was hurrying towards safety.

Varl grinned and allowed himself the pleasure of a low, throaty growl. What better way of honouring the witch's sacrifice? What offering more acceptable than a life quickly taken? Than terror in the hearts of the little men?

Turning around, he dug his claws into the cold wall, finding hand and footholds easily enough, creating them on those rare occasions he could not. He pulled himself up onto the roof of the small hab building behind which he had sheltered and sniffed the air once more.

The scent of the woman overwhelmed his senses, filling his nose and mouth like a rich, sweet wine. Unable to resist, he threw back his head and howled his ecstasy.

The city seemed to hold its breath for a moment and he revelled in imagining countless eyes peering from windows, all turned towards him, straining to see. But, he knew they couldn't. The pathetic idiot animals never could.

Until it was far far too late.


	14. Chapter 3b

**Chapter 3 continued**

He sat in his chair and waited.

Brecht surveyed his study slowly. Apart from the fact that his arm, now bandaged and supported by a sling, was aching, he had, he supposed, come out of the visit to Querin's residence relatively unscathed.

He took no satisfaction in that, however. He only felt the growing restlessness again. Candles flickered in ornate brass holders on the nearby desk, their feeble light illuminating the heavy, lacquered wood and the shapeless outline of the bulky drapes covering the far wall. On the other side of the room, a pot of incense smouldered, scenting the air with bitter, cloying fumes. Just beyond it was...

No. He wasn't going to think about that now.

A scowl twitched across his features and then was gone. He sighed. He had the distinct impression that events were proceeding without him – not just in the medical centre of the Hole, but beyond it, in the city, in the world, in the very universe itself. It was an uncomfortable feeling. He was an Inquisitor at the end of the day. He was meant to know things. Yet here he sat – in the dark.

He drummed his fingers against the arm of the chair. After a few moments, he became aware that the rhythmic pattern of sound seemed to have grown, become amplified. He stilled his hand. Something continued to rattle rhythmically for a brief instant and then fell quiet. Something from the other side of the room.

Brecht's scowl returned and this time it stayed, the lines of shadow on his face seeming to sharpen.

"Damn," he muttered, as he stood slowly. His injured arm began to throb again, pain pulsing in it in time to the odd rattling he had just heard.

He made his way slowly towards the sound, his steps careful as if the floor of his chamber had been mined in his absence. This part of the study was shadowy, poorly-lit, ornate furniture distinguishable only as vague outlines in the gloom.

Eventually, he reached his destination – a wide, low table with intricately carved legs and feet made to resemble dragon's claws. It had been a gift from the Lady Marina Sun Joy, an exquisitely beautiful noblewoman from Adastra IX who had been ridiculously easy to impress. He stood by the table and reached for the lumen lamp he knew was on it. His fingers found the switch and it winked into life, revealing in its soft, amber light the plain wooden chest that was the source of the rattling.

Almost as if his presence had agitated it once more, the chest trembled and shook. Something was moving inside it, pressing against the lead-lined walls within.

Brecht licked his lips uncertainly. He reached out his free hand tentatively towards the wooden chest. Light reflected dully in the simple metal bands that reinforced the wood. He knew that, were he to touch them, they would be warm beneath his fingers.

He remembered.

_The carpet was smouldering beneath his skin and he rolled onto his back, staring up at the gaping __hole where most of the ceiling used to be. The sky was a pale, fragile blue – the colour of the vaich'rir songbirds on Welland's Bounty._

_His heart ached with an unremembered loss. He realised with a sudden chill that he was wide open, unprotected. All his psychic defences had been stripped away in that one moment of revelation._

_Painfully he rolled back onto his stomach and gazed._

_Elinore._

_Elinore kneeling, her eyes open._

_Words wrenched from her mouth. Secrets spilling like vari-coloured jewels from some hidden part of her being._

_"Find the boy in darkness._

_Heed the Child who cannot speak._

_Fear the Black Prince rising._

_Dust._

_Dust._

_All is dust."_

_Elinore screaming, a horrific wailing, an unwavering articulation of a world of torment and agony and death._

_He felt her pain, her anguish, her loss. Staring at her, it was all he could do to keep his sanity._

_Elinore. Her mouth wide open, tears streaming down her face, the golden light transforming each one into a diamond of purest brightness_.

He had dragged himself across the floor towards her. By the time he had reached her, her screaming had ended and her eyes had closed and the bright, beautiful light had faded, leaving her face a waxy corpse white. Only the almost infinitesimal movement of her chest had signalled that she was still alive.

He glanced down at his hand and at the wooden chest rattling on Lady Sun Joy's table. Heed the Child who cannot speak. Well, that was what he was doing, wasn't it? A powerful sense of unease was growing within him, though. Slowly, he placed his hand on the warm, vibrating metal of the wooden chest's clasp, his fingers fumbling awkwardly with the mechanism.

"My lord?"

"By the Throne!" Brecht whirled round, feeling for a moment like a guilty child.

Vivienne Dranguille was standing in the doorway, the light from the antechamber casting her long shadow into the room.

"I could come back another time." Dranguille's voice was carefully neutral.

Brecht ushered her in with a distracted wave of his hand. He turned away from the box reluctantly, as if leaving a favourite lover.

Dranguille stood before him, hands clasped behind her back. The farther side of her face – the right side – was swathed in medical gauze, held in place by clear tape. A white patch covered her eye. Her other eye was surrounded by red raw skin and gleamed with a fierce intelligence.

Gesturing for her to sit in one of the leather-backed seats near the centre of the room, Brecht recalled the time he had recruited Dranguille. It hadn't been long after Adastra IX and Vivienne had been a young, eager adept, who, even back then, had a frighteningly quick mind. She had also, Brecht remembered, been quite beautiful in a somewhat austere fashion. Well, she would not be beautiful anymore. Brecht felt a sharp twinge of guilt but suppressed it easily enough. She'd known what she was getting into.

"You wanted to see me."

Brecht nodded, his face serious. "I want you to bring in Marchmont."

"As you wish."

"I know you've barely recovered from your ordeal -"

Dranguille's tones were clipped, brooking no argument. "I'm fine."

"Very well." Brecht paused. "Take some support nonetheless. That lad Weil looks like he could use some field experience."

A sly smile crept across the Interrogator's mouth. "Yes, he does, doesn't he?"

Dranguille got up to go, but Brecht's voice stopped her. "I can't help having the feeling that we've been played, Vivienne."

The Interrogator looked at him for a moment, her eye glinting in the half-light. "Then we shall have to play harder, my lord." Her mouth again compressed itself into a hard, unyielding line.

Brecht grinned and dismissed her with a flick of his wrist. "Quite." He watched her close the door behind her. "Go and play, Vivienne," he whispered, his face thoughtful. "Go and play."

* * *

He was flying now, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, not with the clumsy desperation of the human vermin, but with the grace and fluid agility of the consummate predator. When the Old Ones had called to him from the depthless malice of the frozen dark, this was what had lured him. For this he had willingly bartered his stultified, civilised, law-embalmed soul.

The woman was frightened.

He had let her see him twice now: the briefest of glimpses – a shape in the very corner of her vision, a shadow on a crumbling wall. Her heart beat quickly in her chest, the sound of blood pulsing in her veins like a siren call to his sensitive ears. She wasn't running yet. No. She wasn't yet quite ready to discard the pathetic cloak of 'civilisation' and reveal the animal she truly was. But she would before the end.

And that would be soon.

For, as much as the thrill of the chase excited him, as much as the scent of her ever-increasing fear coursed through his being like the headiest of drugs, he knew the killing frenzy would soon be upon him – the time when the gift of the Old Ones was strongest. The time when he was at his most powerful. And also his most vulnerable.

Without having to think consciously about it, he leapt a two and a half metre gap between habs, landing gracefully on his powerful legs. He was almost in the throes of the change now. Coarse hair stood out on his forearms and calves; long claws dug into the roof tiles as easily as if they had been made of paper; every sense was straining, acute, eager to drink in every possible aspect of the coming kill. Eager not just to revel in death, but to be overwhelmed by it.

He could see the woman below him, fumbling at a doorway to a Jewellers' Guild boutique, its paint faded and flaking. He could smell the subtle scent of rot from the small patches of exposed wood.

For a long, lingering moment, he gazed on his prey. Short, sandy hair; a thin, sparse frame; plain, cheap clothing, dulled with frequent wear; a single silver bracelet adorning her wrist. Her scent was mingled with cheap perfume, but there was a freshness to it, a naivety. She was young enough still to think of herself as special, favoured by the corpse-god. Life had not yet taught her that all she was was meat.

With a single bound he leapt from the roof, briefly digging his claws into the front of the building to slow his descent, and landed on the pavement with a solid thump. He was about five metres away from her. Easily within striking distance.

Scraps of litter blew down the little street and his hair stirred in the wind. Most of the shopfronts gaped emptily, dilapidated relics of a time when the Cyan Quarter had bustled and buzzed with trade. Now it was quiet, old lampposts gleaming like bleached bones in the morning sunlight.

Varl didn't need to look to know that the woman was the only human in the street. He knew she had heard him. He had counted on it. The change was pushing at the threshold of his consciousness, urgent and seductive, wanting to be let out. He snarled quietly, knowing that she would hear that, too. She stopped fumbling for keys and became perfectly still.

Turn round, he willed, his eyes boring into her tensed back. Turn round and see death.

Very slowly, the woman's head began to move. Jerkily, almost involuntarily, she cast a glance behind her. And stopped, staring.

Varl grinned and took a step forward. The change was gathering like a tidal wave in his blood. Soon there would be nothing but instinct and hunger. But this was the moment he most enjoyed.

The woman's eyes were brown and wide as saucers. She was shaking now, like a tiny rodent, a whimper bound and quivering in the cage of her throat. If she was thinking anything at all it was that this wasn't happening, that it was all a nightmare, a fever dream from which she could awake screaming.

He took another step.

And another.

He was so close he could taste her terror, count the freckles beneath those wide, staring eyes, hear the blood surge desperately in her neck.

Another step.

She was shaking uncontrollably now, seized by a terrible shuddering. The keys jingled in her hands.

And another.

He could reach out a claw and touch her, but he knew that to do so would end things too quickly. If he stroked her, if he felt her skin, he would not be able to control himself. Her fear rolled off her in a stinking miasma, bitter and salty, intoxicating. Wonderful.

He leaned in towards her, let his breath brush against her face like a lover's caress. The change was almost upon him now. He felt the beginning of the terrible pulling in his arms and legs, heard his blood pound impatiently in his ears, sensed the implacable ravenous hunger uncoil like a striking serpent in his aching gut.

His jaw was changing and he knew that in the next few moments he would lose the power of speech, the first symptom of the sickness that was civilisation sloughing off him like old skin. The word he spoke was thick and guttural, awkward and harsh in his stretching, slobbering mouth.

But he leant forward and said it anyway.

"Run."

* * *

The medical section had calmed down somewhat and Sister Hospitaller Livia was rather glad about that. Handing a now empty syringe to a passing servitor, she sat down heavily into one of the functional chairs that were arranged against the far wall of the sickbay. Through force of habit, her hand reached into the pocket of her surgical smock, unconsciously searching for a packet of lho-sticks before stopping abruptly.

Sister Livia scowled as she remembered that she had given up smoking just a matter of hours ago. In point of fact, this was the fourth time she had given up smoking this week. Well, she thought, the Emperor rewards slow persistent determination just as much as He does flashy heroics. The thing was she really did want a smoke right now. Her hands lay uselessly in her lap. It seemed to her that they were, in fact, waiting for something to give them purpose, meaning. Something like a long, slender, slowly burning stick of Kavius IV's finest lho.

There were plenty of her sisters back in the mission on Phrysia Primus who would have frowned on her addiction to lho and a fair few who would have scolded her for allowing her body, an instrument of the Emperor's will, to be so defiled. The beauty of working for the Inquisition, however, was that those self-righteous and pompous voices could no longer be heard, although she was willing to concede that her frequent attempts to break her habit were at least in part a response to her memory of them.

Giving an exasperated sigh, Livia let her hands twitch for a moment before settling for using them to smooth back her hair and fiddle somewhat futilely with the leading edge of her fringe.

"Sister?"

She scowled up at a young, serious-looking orderly. What was his name again? Menkelson, wasn't it? Menkelson? Menderson? Menderring? Men –

"Sister?"

"What is it, Men…" She paused, blinking up at him. "I'm sorry," she said, her face breaking into a disarming smile. "I appear to have forgotten your name again. Menderson, wasn't it?"

At least the orderly had the decency to look thoroughly embarrassed. "Erm, it's Torvald, Sister," he mumbled, quietly. "Gaspar Torvald."

Livia blinked again. The everyday sounds of the medical section seemed to fade into the background for a moment. "Right," she said, briskly. "Mister Torvald, what can I help you with?"

Relief broke like a golden dawn over the young man's features only to be replaced quickly by a look of worried concern. "It's the third patient," he said. "I think there's something you should see."


	15. Chapter 3c

In his darkened chamber, Brecht let out yet another explosive irritated sigh. The last half hour or so had seen his attempts to meditate and rebuild his psychic wards end in more or less abject failure. He understood full well that what he most needed was sleep, but he couldn't rest – not when plagued by the sensation of being on the verge of an important… Well, there was a problem in itself. Discovery? Revelation? The truth was he simply didn't know. That lack of knowledge in itself was discomfiting, a persistent nagging distraction that made complete focus difficult. But, even without it, he would still find the necessary state of contemplation difficult to attain.

It was always hard to concentrate when there was someone else in the room with you.

At least that damnable rattling had stopped.

Brecht cast a wary glance at the chest on its beautifully carved table. Part of him wanted to rush to it and open it, but he knew that he wouldn't find any answers inside. At least, not yet. Another part of him wanted to rush to the medical centre, to check on Elinore, but he had made a pledge to himself a long time ago that he would trust his operatives to do their job and that included Livia and Thesk.

Idly, he considered consulting his library, a modest collection of books and scrolls by Inquisitorial standards, but still a formidable repository of knowledge. Admittedly, there were only a handful of volumes that dealt with the kind of situation in which he found himself now and of that handful only two recommended themselves to his mind as being in any way readable. True, von Klieswort was semi-mystical babble, but at least he had a half-decent turn of phrase.

The other option was Rieserhausen, not exactly recommended reading in either the Ordos Hereticus or Malleus for obvious reasons. Bertrand Rieserhausen had ended his career as an Inquisitor by being seduced by a daemon prince and bombing a perfectly serviceable hive world with cyclonic missiles at the aforementioned daemon's behest. He had been called to attend a forum extraordinaire – a formal trial attended by representatives of all three branches of the Inquisition – to explain his actions. At the hearing the Inquisitor had gibbered and growled like an ape before trying, unsuccessfully as it happened, to wrench his own tongue out of his mouth. It had been an undignified and ignominious end to an otherwise distinguished career, but, nevertheless, one that cast a retrospective pall on all his writings.

Still, Brecht caught himself thinking, that kind of thing wasn't likely to happen to _him _now, was it?

Smiling grimly, Brecht got up and left his room, heading for the library of forbidden, heretical or just plain insane texts in the lowest level of the complex.

* * *

"Well?" Livia demanded.

Torvald made a small, indeterminate gesture which managed to convey both concern and helplessness in more or less equal measure.

Livia waved him back curtly and bent over the patient.

To say that Ernst Montaigne Vollex had seen better days would have been a gross understatement. The former gang member was breathing shallowly, aided by a re-breather mask fixed to his face with surgical tape. A thin plastic tube fed a powerful sedative into his system through a vein in his forearm. His clothes had been removed and no attempt had been made to dress him in a medical gown. The reasons for this became obvious as Livia peeled back the sterile sheets away from his upper body. It seemed that virtually his entire skin was red raw and horribly blistered. In more than a few places, some of the larger blisters had burst, weeping watery blood and, in one or two cases, a thin, yellowy liquid.

Livia crinkled her nose at the smell of seared flesh, mingled with the subtler scent of infection. Vollex's state was unpleasant, but not particularly remarkable. The source of Torvald's concern, though, was obvious.

"What the hell is that?" breathed Livia.

There was a patch of skin on Vollex's chest that had a markedly different colouration to the flesh around it. Where most of his skin was angrily red, this patch was grey – almost as if it were diseased. Or dead. A few silvery-grey hairs appeared to twitch near the centre of this curious patch of flesh.

No. They were twitching…

"Forceps. Size one." Livia held out her hand imperiously. A moment later, Torvald placed the specified instrument in her hand. She took it wordlessly and bent over Vollex's chest once more. After a moment or two, she straightened up. "Get Thesk for me, would you?"

She watched Torvald scurry away, her brow lined in concentration. She was stooped over the patient again by the time Torvald returned, the gaunt figure of medicae-investigator Thesk in tow.

"If this is just about how painful things must be for the Inquisitor's favoured mote of under-hive dust, I shall be extremely annoyed, Sister," said Thesk, his voice dripping with the kind of superiority that Livia usually detested.

"What's this, Thesk?" she asked, too engrossed with Vollex to rise to the usual bait. She stood aside to give the surgeon a better view.

No one on Brecht's medical staff knew exactly how old medicae-investigator Jeremiah Thesk was or where, for that matter, Brecht had recruited him, but everyone did know the story of how he had lost his left eye in a flitter accident early on in his career. The augmetic that had replaced it now glowed a soft blue as the surgeon examined the chest of Ernst Vollex. After a few seconds, he straightened up.

"This is a new development," he said flatly. "When I last examined operative Vollex there was no sign of tissue degeneration."

"Is that what this is? Tissue degeneration?" Livia was sceptical. "But how?"

Thesk turned to glower at her with his good eye. "Obviously, his body has come into contact with some source of contamination."

But Livia was shaking her head. "That doesn't explain this." Politely pushing past Thesk, she bent over Vollex once more, the forceps flashing in her hand under the bright lighting. With seemingly infinite care and patience, she grasped one of the silvery-grey hairs sprouting from the patch of unhealthy looking skin. Holding the forceps tightly, she pulled gently.

Thesk showed no emotion whatsoever when the other 'hairs' embedded in Vollex's flesh began to writhe violently. The sedated Vollex gave no reaction, his breathing remaining shallow, the skin of his blistered face slack. Torvald looked like he might be sick.

Ignoring the activity of the other strands of silver, Livia continued to pull until, with a horribly pronounced sucking sound, the 'hair' came free. It seemed to squirm in the grip of the steel forceps for an instant. The end that had been buried in Vollex's flesh split into two, forming something that could have been a tiny mouth. The strand curled in on itself in a precise spiralling pattern and became still.

"Test tube," snapped Livia.

Torvald hurriedly got one from a nearby servitor and watched anxiously as Livia placed the now inert 'hair' within it. She handed it back to Torvald, who took it from her gingerly.

"A full auspex scan on that, please, Mister Torvald." Livia watched Torvald's retreating back thoughtfully. She turned back to Thesk, one eyebrow arched questioningly. "Tissue degeneration?"

Thesk looked away. "It's possible that there was some sort of… parasitical element introduced at some stage or another…"

Livia shook her head, wryly. "Well, the auspex should tell us one way or… What's that?"

On a small table a few paces away, someone had placed Vollex's belongings. They were many in number, Vollex's kleptomaniac tendencies having been a source of some amusement – and concern – among Brecht's staff for a while now.

But it wasn't the glittering assortment of coins or the polished finger bone or even Vollex's 'blessed lace' that had caught Livia's attention.

Resting on the very corner of the table, slightly removed from the remainder of Vollex's possessions, was a small, hide-bound book. Livia frowned as she walked towards it.

"I didn't know Vollex was much of a reader."

Thesk turned and shrugged. "He was holding that when they brought him in. Holding onto it for dear life."

Livia paused, her fingers just centimetres away from the dark cover of the book.

"Holding it," she said slowly, "to his chest?"

She was staring at Thesk, her eyes suddenly fearful.

"Well, I suppose he was. Yes… What?" Thesk brought his hand up to his chin, a nervous, worried gesture. "You think… Damn!" He turned to a nearby servitor, a desperate authority etched into every line on his face. "You! Seal that object and take it to secure storage area twelve – quarantine level alpha." He turned to Livia as the servitor carried the book away. "I'll tell Brecht. You can supervise the quarantine procedures. We'll have to instigate a full scouring."

Livia nodded. "Who else had contact with him?"

Thesk paled. "Well, I did obviously." He ran a hand through his hair and looked down at the floor. "Torvald… Wesker…" He glanced up again, his face distraught. "I… I don't know…"

"Alright. Contact Brecht. Tell him. It's his call at the end of the day."

Livia watched Thesk move away, a dazed and intensely worried look on his face. This was the horrible reality of working for the Inquisition, she reflected. Its enemies were ingenuous and insidious. There was no such thing as a clean resolution to an Inquisition investigation. There was always a mess to clear up. Always loose… strands.

With some effort, she assumed an attitude of brisk efficiency, gesturing to an orderly and a medicae-servitor to wheel Vollex's bed into a side room. Once they had done so and left, she made her way to a filing cabinet on the far wall. From the bottom drawer, she produced an official scroll of parchment and unrolled it as she walked back to the side room door.

Wordlessly, she taped the parchment to the door. Its message was stark:

_By Order of the Holy Inquisition,_

_This chamber is sealed. Pursuant to the articles of the Conclave of Toraldia and the subsequent treaties of Vanir IX and Gerber's Folly, the punishment of death will follow each and every breach of this quarantine._

_Only authorised personnel of clearance gamma or higher may approach._

_The Emperor's Light Is Pure._

_Purity Is The Light of the Imperium._

She shuddered slightly as she stepped back. She knew full well that Vollex was now a dead man. It was just a matter of time. She'd never really liked him, if she was being strictly honest, but she would have wished him a better death than this, all the same.

So many, she thought. Fenter hadn't returned. Interrogator Willans' remains currently occupied a bucket in the morgue. And now this.

"Sister Livia!" Thesk's voice, urgent and just managing to stay the right side of hysteria, interrupted her thoughts. "I can't raise him on vox. I don't know where he is." The medicae-investigator's augmetic eye pulsed slowly, its stately rhythm seeming to mock his state of agitation.

"Has he left the building?"

"Adjutant Smyre says not."

Livia nodded and headed for the gleaming white double doors. "Stay here, Thesk," she said. "I'll go and find him."

Not bothering to wait for a reply, Sister Hospitaller Livia pushed through the double doors and headed for the nearest stairs. The urge for lho was strong, but she suppressed it. There were more important things to worry about. Fortunately, she had a fairly good idea where her errant Inquisitor might be. If Brecht was incommunicado that generally meant only one thing: he'd picked a really bad time to visit the library.


	16. Chapter 3d

He woke in a hospital bed, the sensation of clean cotton sheets against his skin an unexpectedly pleasant one. The light in the little room was bright, but not uncomfortably so. One quick glance was all it took to apprise himself of his surroundings. A monitoring device hummed quietly next to him, attached to him by black wires. He couldn't quite shake the sense that they were like the tendrils of some aggressive plant, snaring him. It was a ridiculous image, he knew, but it lingered nonetheless. He directed his gaze away from the machine, saw clean walls gleaming white like enamel. Or bone.

"Cheery get, aren't you?" he muttered to himself and shifted within the bed.

"Don't get too comfortable."

He usually prided himself that he could keep cool under pressure, but now he jumped like a startled child at the sound of that voice.

"In… Inquisitor…" he said. "Didn't see you there."

Brecht stepped away from the far wall, his greatcoat forming a stark contrast to the white tiles against which he had been leaning. He smiled thinly, as he strode forward, his shadow falling across the suddenly nervous man lying in the hospital bed.

"Hello, Ernst," the Inquisitor said. He looked around him, the smile still sketched on his face. "Nice place you've got here."

Ernst Montaigne Vollex allowed himself a small shrug. "It's alright, I suppose. A bit pokey, if I'm being honest, but then you can't complain…"

"You know why I've come here."

Vollex stared at the Inquisitor, his mouth suddenly dry, his hands involuntarily clutching at the bed sheets. "Well… I… you know…"

Brecht loomed over him, his eyes gleaming. "You've always known. Deep down. You've always known it would come to this." His voice was calm, each word enunciated as if it existed apart and separate from the one that followed it.

"I… I don't know what you mean…"

"Yes, you do." Brecht sighed and ran a hand over his immaculately combed hair. It was a vain, preening gesture and Vollex had always hated it. The Inquisitor smiled at his operative condescendingly. "You were never like the others, Ernst. Not really. Oh, you tried to fit in. Tried to put on airs and graces. Said the right words. Genuflected in all the right places. But you were always different."

Vollex swallowed. He wanted to say something – a joke, a profanity, a denial – but he couldn't. There was truth here. Cold, hard, irrefutable truth.

"The others, Ernst. They've got something you never had. Even Gustav. Poor, silent Gustav. Not that it really helped him at the end." Brecht paused, the smile still lingering on his lips. "They had faith, Ernst. Faith in a Will that was greater than theirs. Faith in something purer and more permanent than your petty grubbing in the dirt. But you, Ernst. You don't really believe in anything – apart from the basest of creeds. Acquisition. Lust. Survival."

The Inquisitor rummaged in his greatcoat pockets for a moment and produced a small syringe, holding it carefully between his thumb and forefinger. The liquid inside it was clear. It could have been water.

"Time to say goodbye now, Ernst." He smiled, sadly. "You won't be missed."

Vollex watched numbly, as Brecht began to lean over him. The vigour and energy he had felt when he first woke up was now a distant memory. It was as if Brecht's voice, calm and cultured, had drained the strength from him.

"No…" he murmured. "No. Please…"

He felt a pricking on his forearm and a slow, spreading coldness flooding his veins.

Above him, Brecht was smiling his sad, self-righteous smile. So confident. So sure that he was doing what was right. That he was doing the Emperor's Will.

"No..." His voice was tiny in that gleaming room. The coldness was in his chest now, spreading upwards towards his throat, robbing him of his breath, his speech. He could only gasp out his will.

"No."

A clammy darkness encroached upon his vision. The light faded slowly, flickering, dying...

"No!"

He woke up screaming, his body shaking. Sweat coated his skin and his mouth was bone dry. For a moment, there was just the terror – stark and massive in his mind. He saw but didn't register the crumpled bedclothes, the stained peeling paper on the cracked walls. His heart beginning to settle into a more familiar, comfortable rhythm, he allowed himself the luxury of taking interest in his surroundings. A monitoring device creaked and wheezed by his bedside, dribbling narrow strips of paper onto the dusty floor. The lumen-lamp suspended above him flickered and crackled uncertainly as if doubting its ability to dispel the shadows that lurked in the corner.

"Hello."

He blinked. There was a woman sitting by his bedside, although, really, 'woman' seemed too common, too vulgar a word to describe her.

"Hello yourself." Inwardly, he winced at that line. It had come spontaneously, thoughtlessly; he had at least a hundred that were better.

But the woman just smiled, her full, ruby lips curving upwards graciously and her deep brown eyes glimmering richly. She was watching him, though for what he couldn't say. Seconds passed and a silence grew between them – not awkward, but companionable. He felt secure in her presence, at peace. It was as if he had known her all his life and had only just realised that now.

Falling in lustrous waves around her shoulders, the woman's hair was a dark chocolate colour; her skin was a gentle golden brown and the simple black dress she wore revealed a pleasing amount of it. Her breasts were full and the hand she placed on his forearm was slender, her fingers long and delicate.

Fingertips gliding over his skin, she bent her head forward and parted her lips slightly, seeming to indicate that she was taking him into her confidence. Vollex shifted in the bed, bringing his head closer towards her.

When she spoke, her voice was soft and warm.

"Now that terrible man's gone," she murmured, "we can have a proper talk, can't we?"

* * *

Flipping pages restlessly, Brecht was beginning to doubt the wisdom of attempting Rieserhausen's _Heresy and Blood: Of The Lesser Cults of the Valinex Sector_. Not only had the author been clearly well on the way to losing his sanity while compiling it, but the disgraced Inquisitor had an annoying habit of peppering his observations with anecdotes whose relevance to the topic under discussion was at best tangential, at worst non-existent. Chapter Five, for example, had largely been taken up by Rieserhausen's long-winded account of his pet ogryn's sudden need to use the lavatory facilities of Hebner VI, a largely feral world in some benighted part of the sector. As a piece of entertainment it was tedious and flat; as a way of shedding light on Chapter Five's stated subject of 'Roots of the Cult of Melancholy and Gratuitous Sorrow' it was about as useful as.. .well, the lavatory facilities of Hebner VI had been.

Pushing the book away from him in disgust, Brecht sat back and rubbed his eyes. Sleep lurked within him like a stalking panther, but he kept on telling himself he didn't have the time. His librarium featured a rather pleasant reading area and he sank back into the padded leather of his chair and reached for the mug of recaf on the table. His second mug, he reminded himself.

His gaze flickered over the shelves and bookcases around him. So many secrets, so many of them dangerous. Some of the tomes he'd picked up on his travels; others he'd inherited from some fairly dubious sources – other Inquisitors mostly. He'd tried recruiting a librarian once, he remembered, but given up after the third one had had to be dragged out by an entire squad of Inquisitorial Stormtroopers. She'd been foaming at the mouth and screaming something about 'the words eating' her mind.

Brecht sniffed. Perhaps she'd been reading Rieserhausen at the time.

He reached for the second book in the small pile, holding its title up to the light. _Dialectic of Deceit: Subversive Texts And Their Manifold Uses_. Another Rieserhausen. Stifling a sigh of disappointment, he opened it and began to read.

He was still reading fifteen minutes later when he heard the knocking at the door. It started off as a hesitant, timorous tapping, but, by the time Brecht had awkwardly manoeuvred himself out of his seat (he was still not used to wearing a sling) and reached the wide oak-panelled door, it had become a more insistent – perhaps even desperate – pounding.

Scowling, Brecht pulled the door towards him and raised an eyebrow at who he saw there.

"Sister Livia?"

The Sister Hospitaller ran a nervous hand through her fringe and looked up at the Inquisitor, her eyes filled with a curious mixture of relief and apprehension.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, my lord, but..." She let her hand fall limply to her side. "We have a situation."


	17. Chapter 3e

_AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've had a PM from a reader (which is always nice) saying mostly very positive things about the story (which is also nice), but also pointing out that it's sometimes a little hard to keep track of who's who or (perhaps more crucially) where the action's taking place. So, I offer the following by way of clarification:_

_Firstly, this is a long, somewhat meandering story. There's a lot more of it written than has been posted here and there's an awful lot more yet to write, too. I'll try and keep updates fairly regular, but I'm a teacher in my day-job and that may not always be possible. The nature of the story does mean that, yes, there are a lot of characters involved. Sorry about that._

_Secondly, the vast majority of the action takes place on Phrysia Secundus. I thought this was fairly clear from the way the story's written and structured, but it's obvious that some readers haven't found it as clear as I'd hoped. Only the interludes, at the moment, are set on Adyria Six. It will all make sense eventually. Honest..._

_And, I think that's about it. Hope you enjoy this update. There'll be more soon._

_Regards,_

_Jeremy_

**Nine-Tenths Chapter 3 continued**

"I'm still dreaming, aren't I?"

The woman smiled indulgently, but said nothing. Vollex tried to keep his voice calm, conversational.

"I mean, there's the fact that you're obviously my ideal woman…" He swallowed. "Hair, eyes, voice… the way you move…" He was staring intently into her eyes. "You're perfect," he whispered. "Too bloody perfect…" He drew back and closed his eyes.

After a moment, he opened them again. The woman was still there and so was the smile. "And then," he said finally, "there's the fact that this place doesn't have a door. Bit of a giveaway, that."

The smile faded and the woman was staring at him with a burning intensity.

"There is only," she said, "one way out of this place."

"I'm dead, aren't I?"

"Not yet."

"But I might as well be." Vollex paused, licking his lips. "I know what you are, you know. I knew the first moment I laid eyes on you."

The woman shivered a little, but her hand remained on his forearm, stroking it gently.

"I am your choice."

Vollex gave a derisive snort.

"I am your freedom."

"Right. What the hell does that mean?"

Her touch was like silk on his arm, so gentle as to be almost negligible. Almost.

"You've never been free, Ernst. You've always been bound, always beholden, to somebody. Or something." She was smiling again, but this time there was a sadness in her eyes that somehow made it worse. "Do you think the corpse-emperor cares about you, Ernst? Do you think Brecht does?"

"And do you?" Vollex chuckled, harshly.

She ran her free hand through her hair slowly.

"What do you think will happen when you wake up, Ernst? Will Brecht welcome you back with open arms? Clasp you to him in a brotherly embrace? To him you are a tool. A broken, disposable tool. You're of no further use to him."

"But I am to you?"

The woman sighed and got up abruptly, smoothing her dress down with those perfect, slender hands. The sudden absence of her touch on his arm almost made Vollex gasp with pain.

She looked down at him sadly. "Perhaps I should go," she said. "Perhaps you'd like Inquisitor Brecht to visit you again."

Vollex remained quiet.

"But that didn't go so well last time, did it?" She took a step towards him, her voice low and tender. "And when you felt the cold touch of death upon you, you didn't seem so keen on sacrificing your life for your precious god-Emperor then, did you?"

He glared at her.

"Did you?" She was smiling now, a broad, lascivious smile. Her lips were red and glossy like the skin of an apple. She stretched her hand out towards him.

He looked at it for a long time, remembering what her touch felt like, remembering the moments of his life when he'd felt superior to the mindless drones who spouted their pieties to the Emperor, while living their lives solely for themselves. But that sense of superiority had come at a price, he realised. It was true, he supposed. What he believed in, what he really truly believed in, had less to do with a ten thousand year old man sitting on a throne and more to do with his utter conviction in his own ability to survive in this harsh uncaring galaxy.

Shifting his eyes to hers, he reached out and took her hand in his.

"No," he said, quietly.

She brought his hand up to her mouth, rubbing her lips against it gently. Still smiling, eyes twinkling like diamonds in her beautiful, perfect face, she bent over him.

"Good boy, Ernst. Now stay still," she said, bringing her face so close to him that he could feel the heat of her breath on his cheek. "This won't hurt a bit."

* * *

"And where is this book now?"

Brecht was stalking down the corridor, long coat swirling around him. Livia was struggling to keep up.

"I ordered it removed to a secure storage tank. Number twelve, in fact."

"Good. Have you read it?"

Livia frowned. "I can't say I was in the mood. As far as I know, no one's so much as looked at it. It was with his other personal effects."

Brecht nodded, apparently satisfied. "And the sample?"

"I asked Torvald to run a full auspex scan," she said. "We should get our answers… soon."

She stopped for a moment to get her breath back. Brecht kept striding and she scowled. Damn those lho-sticks! With as much dignity as she could muster, she half-ran, half-walked after him.

After a few moments, Brecht stopped by a lift entrance and thumbed the button. He whirled on her.

"Quarantine procedures have been followed to the letter?"

Livia met his piercing gaze with a cool one of her own. "Yes. No one enters or leaves. The last personnel to do so were Interrogator Dranguille and her team. They only just got out."

"And Vollex?"

"Is in a sealed room as per standing orders in situations like this. He's not going anywhere."

Brecht scowled and looked like he was about to say something further when the lift arrived, accompanied by a soft ping.

The two stepped inside and, as the lift began transporting them upwards with a gentle lurch, silence fell, leaving Livia to look at the drab, functional interior and Brecht to think his own dark thoughts. She frowned, once more feeling the need to do something with her hands. She settled for thrusting them into her pockets, but then that damned fringe got into her eyes again. Awkwardly, she pushed it back. At least he hadn't asked the obvious question yet.

"Why hasn't he been cremated?"

Sighing, she folded her arms. "He's your man."

Brecht turned to regard her fully. Whatever answer he'd been expecting that obviously wasn't it.

"Quarantine procedures are clear in a case like this."

"In a case like this?" Livia once again attacked her fringe, this time with a contemptuous flick of her wrist. "What is a case like this, Inquisitor?" She glared at him.

"In the event of a clear moral threat, the supervising officer has the duty to terminate all known persons affected," Brecht said, his voice clipped and utterly devoid of emotion. "Contamination and corruption are to be rooted out and utterly destroyed. Those are standing orders for all Inquisition facilities." He sighed and smoothed his hair back, just as the lift came to a halt. He strode out, but waited for her before continuing. "You may be guilty of dereliction of your duty, Sister."

At least he sounded upset about that, thought Livia. Even if it was only a little.

"He's your man," she repeated, following him out of the lift. "If it was an orderly or a guard who'd been affected, I'd have had no hesitation, but… Inquisitor, the top and bottom of it is that I don't have the authority to execute a member of your personal retinue."

Ahead of her, Brecht halted and this time Livia took her time in reaching him. She looked up at him, searching for something she could appeal to in that stern, handsome face.

"Only you do," she said, softly. He met her gaze for an instant and then looked away.

"I'd better get on with it then, hadn't I?" he muttered. And then he was off again, his footsteps sounding heavily. Livia sighed once more and hurried after him.

Thesk was waiting for them, when they arrived in the medical section. He hurried forward eagerly.

"My lord, I've begun rigorous checks on all medical personnel. Nothing so far. I'm not sure just when –"

"Has anyone else touched the book?" Brecht's eyes scanned the room, a ferocious glare stamped on his features. It looked for all the world as if he were trying to locate traces of the contamination on his own.

"It seems likely that one or two of the orderlies may well have…"

"But there's no sign of any infection?"

"As I've just said, my lord, it's a little too early to tell..." Thesk's voice trailed off uncertainly. Even he could apparently tell when he wasn't being listened to.

They were now standing outside the quarantined room, the thick sepia-tinged scroll with its heavy gothic script holding Brecht's full attention. Livia glanced at Thesk and then back to Brecht. The Inquisitor had become perfectly still.

"We haven't had time to prepare a full report, my lord," she said carefully. "It may be best to wait for the results of the auspex analysis before we do anything too… precipitate."

Brecht turned his face slowly towards her and she was shocked at the anguish she saw there.

"Thank you, Sister," he said simply. "Believe me, I'm not about to throw away the life of one of my most trusted operatives on a whim."

Bowing her head, Livia murmured, "Of course, my lord."

Brecht rested his hand on the door. "You say he's unconscious?"

"Yes, my lord."

"I'd like to see this thing for myself."

Livia paused, but understood there was little point in arguing. "As you wish, my lord." She snapped her fingers and a nearby orderly brought surgical gowns and masks. "I don't think the contamination is airborne, but wearing these might be a sensible precaution…"

But Brecht had already opened the door, striding into the room beyond, his face a stern mask. Livia once again found herself hurrying to catch up with him, the gowns and masks still folded over her arm.

She stopped short in the doorway, almost bumping into Brecht who had evidently reacted in much the same way.

"That's impossible!" she gasped.

Ernst Montaigne Vollex was sat up in bed, the exposed skin of his face, shoulders and chest completely clear of blistering and infection. Even from the doorway, she could see that the thin silver 'hairs' that she had observed on his chest just a few minutes ago had completely disappeared. She licked her lips uncertainly, an indeterminate feeling of unease uncoiling in her stomach.

"Hello there!" said Vollex, smiling. "I hope you've brought some tangerines or something. I'm starving!"

* * *

Breakfast had been a solitary, perfunctory and above all greasy affair. Slack looked at the half-eaten, heavily peppered grox meat slowly congealing in a pool of its own fat and allowed the corners of his mouth to droop into their customary scowl of disapproval. As commemorative meals went it had been pretty shoddy.

Stifling a belch, he sat back and stared at the far wall of the dingy apartment, seeing but not seeing the flaking plaster, the smoky stains, the thickening cracks.

"Things fall apart…" he muttered and he was surprised at the amount of bitterness in his voice.

Things fall apart. Yes, and things had fallen apart pretty spectacularly just a few hours ago.

The attack on the compound had come swiftly and without warning. All the scheming and the planning, all the glorious talk about how they were going to take the city for the lords of the boiling void had been exposed for what it always had been – the empty dreams of the dispossessed and frustrated, the whining pretentions of the lost and insignificant.

And he hadn't been there, had he? No, he had been with Varl praying and performing the ceremonies as if nothing untoward was happening. As if all their friends in the cult weren't being slaughtered by the corpse-emperor's attack dogs and his stupid brainless bitches with their power armour and hymns of blinkered faith.

And then, just an hour or so ago, the final straw. The single bright beautiful flame guttering and dying in his mind.

The sound of the chair scraping against the floor sounded unnaturally loud in the little apartment as he rose to clear the remains of his breakfast from the simple wooden table. He began to entertain thoughts that the chipped plate, swimming with grease and bearing the unpalatable leftovers of over-processed, artificially spiced meat, was somehow symbolic of his shabby, pointless existence. He turned listlessly towards the small kitchen.

And Varl burst in through the back door, coat flapping behind him, eyes dark and glowering.

Slack took an involuntary step backwards. He couldn't remember when he'd first met Varl. There was a time when that would have worried him, but not anymore.

"Do… do you want some breakfast?"

"I've already eaten," growled Varl, as he pushed past Slack and headed for the bedroom.

Slack set the plate back down on the table, putting the fork on top of it with trembling fingers. The metal rattled against the ceramic for a moment. Smoothing his thinning hair back against his scalp, Slack darted towards the bedroom. He hovered in the doorway, watching Varl's back as the bigger man hunched over the splintered packing case that comprised the makeshift altar, rummaging among the fetishes and offerings that littered its surface.

Slack swallowed nervously.

"What… what's going on?" He glanced back over his shoulder, but the dingy room with its peeling wall hangings and moth-eaten chairs remained still and empty. He turned back to see Varl stuffing something into his pocket.

"I mean… after last night…" Slack let his words trail away. He watched Varl reach for another object and cram it into his pocket. Slack couldn't see what it was. "And then… you know… this morning…"

Another fetish was taken from the altar. This time Slack recognised it. A strange feeling scratched inquisitively at the walls of his stomach. Something was going to happen. Slack knew this. The little apartment seemed to have expanded since Varl's entrance. The stained walls breathed out their expectation. Slack rubbed his stubble-coated cheek. His own skin felt strange beneath his touch.

Watching the larger man crouching over the altar, hair falling past his broad shoulders like a shaggy mane, Slack was struck once more by how little he knew of him.

He seemed to remember a meeting at the underpass by the spaceport, the air sharp and cool, his body sweating with expectation and fear. But the context of that memory remained elusive and it slipped back beneath the surface of his mind like a sea-going leviathan diving towards the deep.

"I felt…" He stopped himself as he saw Varl's back stiffen and the large hands pause in their methodical scavenging. "Where have you been?"

Varl began sorting the detritus on the altar's surface, discarding some quickly and examining others more carefully. They stayed on the altar, however. The big man seemed to have found what he wanted. He didn't turn round when he answered.

"I've left a message with Marchmont."

Slack's eyes narrowed. "Is that wise? Marchmont – "

"Is not someone we need concern ourselves with again." Varl glanced over his shoulder and, not for the first time in his life, Slack recoiled from the ferocious intensity of those dark eyes.

The smaller man felt a familiar sense of helplessness, but it was tinged with frustration and it was frustration that prompted him to blurt out, "Varl, what's happening? The cult's gone. Kelver, Shanc, Villerhausen – they're all gone. Even Arielle…" Varl was turning to look at him now, but Slack carried on. "And then this morning… I mean, she's dead, isn't she?"

Slack had seen Varl in action before, but he was still completely unprepared for the sheer fluid power of his movement. Without warning, Varl sprang up and, in one savage effortless motion, grasped Slack by the throat, pushing him back against the door jamb. The larger man's hand was an iron band around Slack's neck. Tightening.

"You will not speak of her again," Varl growled hoarsely and Slack's eyes widened in terror as he saw Varl's begin to change from perfectly normal, light brown human eyes into the narrow, black, utterly cold ones of a feral alien killer.

Varl's breath was hot on his face. It stank of old blood.

"You are not worthy."

Suddenly, the pressure on his throat was gone and Slack was gasping and spluttering, bent double, while Varl returned to stand before the altar. He gazed at it dispassionately.

"We leave today."

Slack was rubbing his neck gingerly. "Today? But…"

"No buts," Varl said, flatly. "We always knew this was going to happen. The trap's been sprung. It is our signal to leave this place."

Slack's already pale face turned a shade whiter. "Leave? But… after last night…"

Varl was staring at him. "The cult has served its purpose." He grinned suddenly. "It gave us a way in."

"I don't understand. All those people…" Slack shook his head. "Weren't we supposed to take this world? Weren't we supposed to make the streets of this city run with the blood of the corpse-god's children?"

Varl's short bark of laughter was like a slap in the face. "Why on earth would the gods want this backwater hovel of a world? When there are more important prizes to be claimed."

The little apartment seemed suddenly to lurch around him. Slack grasped the door jamb behind him, as he fought the urge to topple backwards.

"Wh… what do you mean?"

Varl gazed at him and Slack flinched beneath that cool, appraising stare. The silence between them stretched and became something taut and dangerous, a connection that Slack did not want to acknowledge. He glanced away and Varl's laughter, harsh and derisive, rang in his ears.

"Oh, Slack," said Varl, his voice dripping scorn. "Poor little Slack. You really have no idea, do you? Do you really think…"

When Varl didn't deign to continue, Slack looked up at him and saw something on the bigger man's face he had never seen before.

Awe.

"Well," said Varl, hoarsely, his eyes fixed on Slack, "will you look at that?"

Slack swallowed. That sensation that he had felt earlier had returned with a vengeance. His own skin felt as if it belonged to someone else, as if it was somehow distant from him. His arm itched and he glanced down at it and gasped. For a brief moment, he saw through his skin – now as translucent and wonderful as crystal – down to the thin, white bone. For the briefest of moments, he grasped, he understood, he knew how mutable the world of flesh really was. All you needed to change the physical world that the cattle who worshipped the corpse-emperor took to be 'reality' was power. And the knowledge to use it.

He looked up at Varl. "Wh… what's happening?"

Varl laid his hand tenderly, reverently, on Slack's forehead. His answer was a hushed whisper.

"Something's coming."

* * *

Brecht stood by the doorway, unmoving. With clear unwavering eyes, he watched Vollex as Sister Livia, dumped the gowns she had been carrying at the foot of the bed and hurried to his side, bending over him. He watched her flick her fringe out of her eyes, as she began her examination.

"Steady, sister," said Vollex, winking cheekily at her. "That tickles!"

Livia ignored him, probing the smooth, healthy skin of his chest and shoulders with her fingers. She glanced up at Brecht, careful to keep her pale face away from her patient.

"Nothing," she said quietly. "There's nothing." She bit her lower lip uncertainly. "But there was…"

"Would you leave us please, Sister?" asked Brecht.

Livia nodded and moved away. From the expression on her face, she was glad of Brecht's request.

Brecht waited for the soft click of the door shutting before he moved toward the bed slowly. His left arm was itching terribly in its sling, but he resisted the compulsion to scratch. Concentrated on the job.

It was Vollex who spoke first. He'd been expecting that.

"Been in the wars yourself, eh, my lord?"

Smiling, Brecht shrugged slightly, taking great care not to move the wounded arm. "No more than you, Ernst."

"Hell of a morning." Vollex shook his head, ruefully.

"Yes." Brecht looked around him for a moment, taking in the gleaming white walls and the inspirational text pinned above the bed. To Obey The Will of The Emperor Is Healing For The Flesh. He perched himself on the side of the bed. Vollex shifted slightly to give him room. "I'm here to debrief you, Ernst. Oh, and make sure you've not been corrupted by the ruinous powers." He chuckled softly and, after a split second of uncertainty, Vollex laughed, too.

"Yeah, well, I thought I was dead and buried there for a moment."

"Tell me what happened."

Vollex scratched the side of his face absently. "Well, Gustav and I…" He stopped and looked up at Brecht, curiously. "Gustav. Is he…?"

"He's not been found, I'm afraid. The ruins of the house were quite… disordered."

Vollex's face fell and Brecht felt a stab of pity for him. "Poor Gustav."

"Yes." Brecht leaned forward. "You and Gustav gained access to the girl's suite, Ernst. That much we already know. What did you find there?" A rippling portal of perfect darkness shimmered and pulsed in his mind.

He watched Vollex's face carefully, caught the involuntary tic just below the left eye as he answered. "I… I don't remember. It's all, you know… Dark."

Nodding his understanding, Brecht stood up, thrusting his one good hand in his greatcoat pocket. "That's alright. It must have been very trying for you."

He watched the little man catch the sigh of relief in his throat and let it out in a more measured exhalation. He felt nothing. His hand closed around the compact laspistol in his greatcoat pocket. The metal and plastic casing of the weapon was hard. So hard.

"But at least you're better," he said brightly. "That's the main thing. In fact, we should give the Emperor praise for your miraculous recovery. You had us all worried there for a while."

Vollex grinned. "You know me, my lord," he said. "I'm made of stern stuff."

Brecht continued smiling. "No, I know. I haven't forgotten Graltor." He continued smiling. "Do you know, I don't think I ever adequately thanked you for that."

The smaller man shrugged, not quite able to hide his confusion at the unexpected turn the conversation had taken. "Graltor was years ago, my lord. I was just… you know… doing my job."

"Not at the start you weren't." Vollex's eyes had lost some of their certainty. The rules of this particular game were changing. "You can't tell me that you took care of that business with the House Venerare assassin out of enlightened self-interest."

"Yeah, well… Seemed like a good idea at the time."

"And now?"

Vollex's head jerked upwards, the eyes sharp, piercing.

"Sorry?"

"Does saving my life seem like a good idea now?" Brecht began to withdraw his hand from his pocket, but was shocked to see that Vollex wasn't looking at him. He was staring into the middle distance, his eyes seeming to shimmer and change for a moment.

"Something's coming," the little man muttered softly.

Inquisitor Aloysius Engstrom Brecht stood perfectly still, the hand clutching the laspistol still mostly in his greatcoat pocket, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end, as he felt a strange power begin to build within the little room. The ancient paper with its pious devotional text rustled in an unseen wind.

Brecht's eyes narrowed and he drew out the laspistol slowly. His voice sounded strange and distant in his ears.

"What did you say?"

**To be continued**


	18. Chapter 3f

**Chapter 3 conclusion**

Varl gazed at Slack and wondered.

The last time he had felt this curious tugging sensation in the core of his being had been three years and a dozen sectors away. The results then had been explosive. He wondered what might happen this time.

Slack was staring at him, stupidly, completely unaware of the sheer potential gathering in the little squalid room. No. Not completely unaware. Was that the flickering spark of understanding in his eyes?

No matter. He would understand fully soon enough.

Slack, his clothing, the battered furniture in the dirty, litter-strewn apartment, the cracked and stained plaster on the walls: they were all fading, losing definition in his sight. It was as if the reality he could see – the reality that the two-legged cattle worked, lived and died in – was only a web woven tightly over a darker, more powerful truth that pulsed urgently underneath. All he needed to do was shift his perspective away from the mundane, apparently solid, strands towards the raw hungry stuff of the true reality beneath them.

Every so often he was granted the power to do just this.

He reached his hand out reverently to touch Slack's forehead, knowing instinctively that here was where that critical shift of sight would begin. Where it would end, he did not know. But he was looking forward to finding out.

Slack looked up at him uncertainly and Varl knew he had only just managed to resist the instinctive urge to pull away from his touch. A moment ago, he would have been amused by that. Perhaps even angry.

But not now.

Now he revelled in the sensual build up of power that he felt within him.

"Something's coming," he breathed.

* * *

Vollex had always been quick. Quick-fingered, generally. The little man had pickpocketed, backstabbed and dodged his way into a position of prominence in the under-hive of Graltor's major conurbation and those skills had been useful to the Inquisition on countless occasions. But, he had never been this quick.

One moment he had been staring away from Brecht, muttering to himself. The next he was leaping out of the bed, springing forward, eyes glittering darkly, face twisted into a feral snarl.

Instinctively, Brecht brought up his laspistol, but he was simply too slow. Vollex was on him, hand gripping his one free wrist, while the other punched his sling-bound forearm viciously.

Pain lanced angrily through the injured arm, but Brecht wasn't given time to cry out. Even as Vollex's fingers found pressure points in the Inquisitor's wrist, the smaller man's knee slammed into his groin and the Inquisitor fell to the floor, doubled over in agony, the laspistol falling away from his numb fingers. He was all too aware of the smaller man standing over him, as he struggled to recover.

"Did you really think I was just going to lie there while you gave me a 'regrettable but necessary termination', my lord?" Vollex sneered. He bent down, eyes dancing with dark amusement. "Sorry, my lord, but I've had a better offer."

Brecht rolled over and groaned loudly, muttering something through a thick veil of subsiding pain. Vollex bent closer.

Just as Brecht had wanted him to do.

Rolling over suddenly and wincing as pain flared once more in his injured arm, Brecht lashed out, punching Vollex's windpipe. As the smaller man reeled backwards, hands raised automatically to his throat, Brecht kicked his shin and was rewarded with the satisfying crack of broken bone.

Screeching a particularly foul obscenity, Vollex fell to the floor, even as Brecht tried to scramble to his feet, eyes searching for the gun. It was nowhere to be seen. But Vollex was already moving, his naked body glistening with sweat under the harsh anti-septic lighting. The injury to his shin hadn't seemed to slow him down much. Brecht gasped as Vollex shoulder-barged him off his feet again.

The smaller man was on top of him now, leering triumphantly. This close up, a part of Brecht noted curiously, his skin seemed to have acquired an unhealthy silvery-grey sheen.

"Nice try, Inquisitor," whispered Vollex fiercely, his voice hoarse and wheezing. He pinned his opponent with one hand while gripping his neck with the other. "But it's time to bring this particular line of inquiry to an end."

* * *

Varl stared at the skin stretched tight on Slack's forehead. Or, to be more accurate, he stared through it. He saw the skin melt away, the sinew quiver and fray like old string, the gleaming bone become translucent. He glimpsed the glistening secrets of the brain, saw fear, a shivering knot of thoughtstuff, cower at the base of the grey mass.

Power snaked through his fingertips and he smiled. On ancient Terra, men of science (a lost art now, thanks to the superstitious mummery of the Adeptus Mechanicus) had unlocked the secrets of the body's genetic code, mapping and then splicing DNA. Playing god.

Varl smiled as he saw Slack's flesh spasm and become unstable before his eyes. Tantalising threads of his being were clearly visible to him. All it would take was a pull here and a tug there and Slack would unravel like an old garment.

This wasn't playing god. This was the real thing.

Sounds, strange and awkward, forced their way through Varl's lips and Slack, snivelling and fearful, tried to pull away, but he held him firm. No, the words held him still. Alternately harsh and glottal and then soft and sibilant, they vibrated with power, hanging on the fraught air, not fading, but reverberating. Gathering.` Building.

The stale fried meat odour of the apartment was smothered by something else. A wave of animal lust. The stink of terror. The onset of change.

Varl chuckled and it seemed that the voice of a vast, capricious god answered with its own dark laughter.

Closing his eyes, Varl dug his fingernails into Slack's skin and pulled.

* * *

Brecht felt Vollex's grip on his neck tightening with an unnatural strength. Desperately, he scrabbled at his belt with his free hand, shrugging awkwardly out of the sling, ignoring the sickening tearing sensation as his stitches finally gave way.

He always wore a dagger on his hip, mainly as a ceremonial affectation. If he could just…

"I don't think so." Vollex's voice was as malicious as his smile. "Knife work? Not really your style." His hand darted forwards and withdrew the dagger before Brecht could reach it. Light gleamed off its blade. "Now me on the other hand. I like a good stabbing every now and then."

The knife flashed downwards and Brecht screamed.

* * *

Slack was screaming, but the words kept coming, deliberately, powerfully.

Something burst out of Slack's forehead and Varl felt a deep well of power open up within him as he realised that it was a horn, long and curving. His own flesh leapt and danced at the sight of it and he had to struggle to stop himself from changing too.

He stepped back. Now that the change had begun, it needed no guidance from him. Whatever would follow was as the gods decreed.

Slack was screaming, but his body was responding to the dark gods' touch. Bones cracked and popped. Skin thickened and coarsened. Muscles stretched and bulged. His jaw distended and a thin serpentine tongue flicked out.

Varl grinned as the words continued to dance and caper on his tongue.

* * *

Blood was pouring from Brecht's upper arm, mingling with the slower flow seeping through the dressing on his forearm.

Vollex was playing with him. With his failing strength, he tried one last time to shake him off, but his body was going into shock and his attempt was feeble, easily resisted.

A slow numbness crept over Brecht's skin and he felt a sudden urge to shiver.

"Heretic…" he said faintly. "You'll burn for this."

Vollex snarled. "Look at me, Brecht! I'm not the one dying in a pool of his own blood! Look at me!"

And Vollex changed. Not slowly, but in the blink of an eye. One moment his skin was bare and gleaming, the next it was covered in hundreds of tiny silvery hairs, undulating sinuously. Thin, questing cilia thrust their way out of his mouth, dribbling obscenely down his chin. His eyes were perfectly black like tar.

The floor was sticky beneath Brecht's hand. His vision was blurring and he watched helplessly as Vollex raised the dagger again.

* * *

"What… what's happening to me?"

Slack's voice had become a quiet, furtive thing, a breath borne on a mad god's whisperings. Varl looked at him approvingly. His shoulders had broadened considerably, ridges of bone protruding in a ragged v-shape from the joints to midway down his chest. His skin was now composed of large overlapping scales, thick and glistening like wet leather and his heavily muscled arms ended in powerful three-fingered claws. The muscles of his thighs had split the loose leggings he had been wearing.

"You have been blessed," Varl said, struggling to restrain the elation he felt within him.

Suddenly, Slack bent over double and Varl grinned as he remembered the reaction he had felt when the gods had bestowed their gifts on him many light years away and what seemed like a lifetime ago.

"I hunger," Slack whispered.

Varl stepped forward and placed his hand on Slack's head affectionately, his gaze taking in the jutting horn, the lizard-like eyes, the slobbering mouth.

"Then you must hunt, my dear Slack," he said, softly. "Come, kill and eat."

* * *

The dagger plunged downwards, but, from behind Vollex, there was a blur of movement and its aim was deflected, its force diffused. It entered Brecht's side and, even as pain flared outwards, the Inquisitor saw Vollex let it go and begin scrabbling at his neck. Something was tightening around it. Something thin and plastic.

With a gargantuan effort of will, Brecht shifted his focus and saw Livia standing over the nightmarish figure of Vollex, her hands pulling a length of intravenous tubing tight around the former operative's neck. He saw the hundreds of silver hairs covering his body writhe and thrash as if they were somehow sensing his agony.

The smaller man raged, choking and gasping, trying to twist round, but Livia's knee was firmly in the small of his back and she was pulling with all her might. His hands scrabbled at the thin tubing wrapped around his neck, but the plastic was already biting into the flesh and the blood from the wound made its surface too slippery to find purchase.

Desperately he flailed, trying to reach behind him and find Livia's face, but the Sister Hospitaller would not let go, a look of grim determination in her eyes. Brecht reached for the dagger hilt, some part of his hazy mind entertaining the idea of removing the weapon and using it to help the Sister. But his hands simply would not co-operate with his mind. All he could do was watch as Livia did what he should have done.

After what seemed an age, with a last gasping rattle, Ernst Montaigne Vollex died. Livia released the blood-slicked tubing and shoved the corpse away from her. She stumbled towards Brecht, her face stricken.

"Medic!" she yelled shrilly. "In here now!"

The creeping numbness had spread to Brecht's neck and face now. He heard Livia's voice as if from a great distance and briefly wondered what all the fuss was about. And then he remembered.

He was dying, wasn't he?

"Oh Emperor, he's lost a lot of blood… Two stab wounds… The one in the side looks…"

He could feel her hands upon his flesh and there was an odd sensation of being lifted up, but these feelings were so distant as to be almost negligible. A warm, soft darkness seemed to hover just above him and he realised that, really, that was just what he needed right now.

"Auspex reads life signs failing."

He wanted to tell Livia that she had done well, that there was no need to worry now. Everything was going to be alright.

"Emergency transfusion. Forget prepping the theatre. We haven't time!"

He wanted to say something clever and witty. He wanted to tell her that he didn't have time to die. That there was simply too much to do. All he needed was a rest, that was all.

"We're losing him, dammit!"

With a long sigh, Brecht let the warm, soothing darkness wash over him.

"_Dammit!"_


	19. Interlude 3

**Interlude 3**

_Adyria Six_

It is two minutes to Evenshade. The Great Sand Sea burns with golden fire in the light of the dying sun and innumerable lights, like winking jewels, glow fiercer and fiercer in the tough, uneven skin of Hive 13. Shadows lengthen and cold stars flare into being in the darkening sky. Yet still the great furnaces of the city roar and growl; chimneys blast sulphurous smoke into the cooling air. Bloated transports circle the upper reaches like sun-drowsed insects, waiting for their clearance to land.

It is two minutes to Evenshade, but the city does not sleep, does not begin the slow descent into sweet, well-earned rest. Insatiably, obsessively, the city continues its remorseless quest for productivity, gears clanking, engines throbbing, drinking the endlessly-recycled fuel of humanity that services it. The city does not sleep, no, but there are moments of change and transition, moments when the great beast catches its breath, gathering its strength for the next gruelling round of grim and brutal toil.

It is two minutes to Evenshade. The huge steel doors of Refinery 17 take precisely seventy-two seconds to open fully. Embossed with symbols of manual labour and industry, an angular, stylised representation of Saint Brassus Vulcanor, the Imperium's patron saint of industrial toil, prominent in their centre, the doors begin to open, moving with slow deliberation on oiled hinges and squealing tracks. Opening as they have done for centuries – with majestic and solemn inevitability.

The Concourse of Holy Endeavour is already full of workers. Burly pipemen, their cracked and pitted helmets held loosely in brawny hands; thin-faced maintenance crew in dirty yellow coveralls, eyes quick and restless; pale-skinned adepts, hands nervously smoothing sandy robes, eyes cast downwards, avoiding the manual workers' unspoken contempt: all are waiting, not with expectation, for lifetime upon lifetime of repetitive routine has all but extinguished that, but with satisfaction. The ritual is commencing; the players have taken their positions; an eternal truth is affirmed in their presence.

_Work is the duty of every man; in work alone will the honest man of the Imperium find his reward._

With a resounding double clang that shakes the bones of every worker there, the double doors swing open and lock into place.

There is a rising rumble of sound as the workers shuffle forward, eyes fixed straight ahead of them. The oppressive heat and incessant clangour of Refinery 17 await them.

The Evenshade shift has begun.

Entering through the left hand door, the pool of humanity is sucked into the cavernous recesses of the ancient refinery. As they pass the threshold, the workers do not gaze up at the carved, scrolling metalwork, at the hammers and wrenches embossed in the wall to their left. The time for intimidation, for being impressed is long past. With the soft rolling gasp of ten thousand shuffling steps, Refinery 17 swallows the Evenshade shift whole.

Through the right hand door comes a slowly growing trickle of grimy, exhausted workers. Were they to bother to look across, the workers of the Evenshade shift would see a curious glimpse of their near future: eyes dull and bloodshot, faces drawn with bone-deep tiredness, uniforms smeared with dirt and oil. But they do not look. Why should they? The sight has been witnessed often enough in mirrors and windows and the eyes of loved ones who will await them when their ten hour shift is ended.

As the Evenshade shift begins, the Dunefrost shift ends.

They trudge in silence mostly, these workers, their energy already expended in service to the Emperor. Enormous lifts leading to other levels line the far wall and it is to these that the Dunefrost shift drags itself with slow, weary movements.

There is one figure, however, whose confident gait and alert, almost confrontational, gaze marks him out from the rest. His broad shoulders do not slump with tiredness; his face, although lined, still retains some of its vigour. This is Pol Garren, leader of Maintenance Gang 12-B and today he is a prince among men; today he has earned the right to walk taller than the slow moving herd. Today has seen an honest to Emperor moment of victory in Refinery 17 and Pol Garren has been its architect.

For days now, the tertiary output pipe has been malfunctioning; for weeks, maintenance teams have scoured its length, searching for blockages and finding none, wasting valuable time and resources on a problem that was on the verge of assuming mythic status.

But, no longer. It is rare for workers of the Imperium to be presented with an opportunity for personal glory; it is still rarer when that opportunity is grasped. But that is what has happened today. Pol Garren is a prince among men, because it is he who finally identified the fault in the labyrinthine workings of the south storage vats. It was he and he alone who worked for three hours straight to replace the worn valves and rusted bearings, thus ensuring that the flow of refined promethium was restored.

Now, he swaggers to the lifts, receiving the nods of acknowledgment from those who have heard the story of his triumph. Pol Garren is a prince among men and now he will claim his reward.

Lift doors clank open and the workers shamble forwards towards the steel cages that will take them up, back to their families, back to a familiar routine that is, in its own way, no less wearing than the one they have just left behind.

Pol Garren watches his fellow workers throng in the wide cages, watches the grey functional lift doors slide across. As he hears the straining gears take the load, he turns away and heads purposefully towards the other lift. There are workers here, too, but they are swabs and skivvies, little better than the sand rats which rustle in the shadows beneath the pipes. They glance furtively at Garren as their lift arrives and then enter the grimy, rusted cage that awaits them, moving to one side surreptitiously, giving the maintenance worker a wide berth.

There is only one lift like this, although there may be many reasons why someone like Pol Garren might wish to use it. But all of those reasons are best left unexplored. It doesn't pay to ask too many questions. After all, this is the lift that goes down.

As ancient gears wheeze asthmatically and the lift cage lurches then settles, Pol Garren is not thinking of his wife fifteen levels above him, nor of his children, Tomas and Bern. He is not thinking of the rows of identically configured apartments, nor of the stale cabbage smell that seems to pervade the narrow alleyways that crisscross the habzone. He is not thinking of quiet hours of companionable silence sat in front of the vidscreen, watching the official news channel or the implausibly youthful Father Tarrus deliver his nightly sermon as he has done for the last twenty-five years.

Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, Pol Garren casts his restless glance towards the tarnished floor, the cage bars, the dimly flickering lamp loosely fixed to the ceiling. He does not look at his fellow travellers – thin, emaciated, feral to a man – and they do not look at him.

When the cage shudders to a desultory stop and the doors grind slowly open, there is only one thing on his mind.

It is not his wife.

Pol Garren steps out into The Sink and walks quickly, purposefully. He is a well-built, heavily muscled man and his right hand never strays too far from the large wrench that swings freely from his belt, but, even so, he understands that it doesn't do to wander in The Sink.

He walks quickly, past the dejected beggars that line the main walkway, huddled in threadbare blankets that still bear the lily and eagle emblem of the Order of The Violet Heart. He seems to recall one of the men – Grast, was it? – mention that there were two charitable missions in The Sink. He remembers saying that he couldn't see the point of expending resources on people who deserved to rot. He ignores the beggars, though their stench assails his nostrils as he strides past.

Obscura addicts stumble across his path; one of them, face pockmarked and fingers stained, giggles at him and he stiffens, his hand reaching instinctively for the wrench, but he quickly realises that no slight or challenge is intended. The dissolute wretch is lost in the world of the drug and the laughter is not for him.

The Sink is a collection of narrow thoroughfares and disused pipework from a time when there were only two vast refineries in this section of the city. Over the centuries, it has become a haven for the dispossessed and desperate. Clusters of dwellings grew in the darkness, a brittle crust of humanity settling and hardening in the deep places of the city.

For those prepared to pay, anything a man might want can be found in The Sink. Well, that's what the rumours say.

Pol Garren knows exactly what he wants.

What he wants is standing at the confluence of three vast steel pipes, each one at least ten feet in diameter. Large gashes in the side of the pipes allow easy access, the once-sharp edges dulled by the slow passage of time and frequency of use. Sand sifts through gaping cracks in walls and ceiling. The lamplight is fickle here, but he can see well enough. They are standing in the shadows. Four of them.

He moves slowly, confidently. An old woman shuffles away from him, muttering her madness under her foul breath. He ignores her. The figures by the breached pipes turn to glance at him and then look away. They understand the ritual as well as he does.

He moves towards them, the wrench swaying slightly in time to his slow, deliberate steps.

If you were to ask him, if you were to dredge up some hidden reserves of courage to question why he does this, he would not be able to tell you. All he knows is the strange compulsion that drives him onwards.

The first girl is not a girl at all, really. Cheap make-up and perfume cannot hide the lined, callused skin; the hardened, contemptuous eyes. Her voice is cracked and as dry as the desert beyond the city walls. He ignores her.

The second is an addict, hollow-eyed, smile gently mocking. The sweet mellow scent of voult smoke wreathes her flesh. Pol Garren has seen the effects of the drug first hand; his sister was an addict. He has no wish to remind himself of her death. He walks past the girl.

The third is the one. Her eyes are clear and her skin mostly unblemished. A strange whirling tattoo adorns one side of her face and her lower lip is pierced, but she is young and pretty enough. He stands before her, feeling the tension of his journey through The Sink drain away to be replaced by a darker, more urgent anxiety.

As if sensing this, she takes his hand and reaches forward, whispering her price into his ear. It is not much. Not much at all.

He smiles. After all, is he not a prince among men? Is this not his reward? She leads him into the ruptured pipe where the shadows wait and he follows, confident. Her hand is small and hot inside his; he rubs the back of it with his thumb gently.

The inside of the pipe is gloomy and it takes a little while for his eyesight to adjust. The girl is smiling, muttering something under her breath. He cannot quite make out the words, but that really doesn't matter. He isn't paying her for her conversation.

She pulls him towards her, brushes her mouth against his cheek. He moves his hands down her back, marvelling at how thin and fragile she seems. Sand slithers softly underfoot.

Somewhere behind him, wings beat the air in a flurry of distant sound.

Her scent is suddenly overwhelming – lavender and roses. Her skin is hot beneath his hands. He half-turns away, but she takes his face in her hand and guides his mouth to hers.

Something lands on his back. He hears the sound of wings again. They beat once. Twice. Cool air slides across his cheek. Somewhere far away, a child is laughing, giggling in the shadows.

He must turn; he needs to see what's –

The girl is backing away now, disentangling herself from his grasp. He opens his mouth to protest. This isn't right. This isn't how it's supposed to be. The words die in his throat.

The wings beat again. The thing on his back shifts and Pol Garren feels an icy shard of terror lodge somewhere deep within him. The thing on his back has claws.

His shirt splits as easily as the skin beneath it. Pain, bright and sharp, slashes forward. Oh, Emperor, why is it so cold? The thing on his back is suddenly heavy, its weight driving him to his knees. It thrusts forward once more and the icy claws go deeper, pushing further and further in.

A horrible tightness fills his chest and he gasps for air that will not come. The girl has gone, swallowed by shadows. He is alone in this vast, echoing space. Alone with –

Another push. There is a sickening, tearing sound and Pol Garren whimpers with agony as he sees the tips of three blood-slicked claws emerge from his chest. They pulse coldly and the blood that smears their surface hardens and glitters in the half-light.

Desperately, he tries to bring his hands up to dislodge the thing that has sunk its claws into his back. And gasps when he sees how thin and feeble his arms have become. Through a haze of pain, he sees the skin crack and wrinkle like old parchment, sees the brittle bones underneath.

With a sudden vicious movement, coldness lances down towards his gut and up towards his brain. Desperately, he screams, but, as his frail body topples to the ground and the thing on his back beats its terrible wings, even that is taken from him, stolen by a gust of sudden wind and borne away on loose clouds of crimson sand.


	20. Chapter 4a

**Thank you for the continued comment, some of which has been very positive indeed. I'm very humbled, dear readers, that some of you have taken the time to review this story. This chapter marks a slight change of focus - and pace. Hope you enjoy! :)**

**Chapter Four**

Its servos humming quietly, the unmarked Inquisitorial ground car came to a slow halt at the end of Purity Street and waited. Its pock-marked exterior and flaking off-white paint were completely unremarkable in this sector of Brachius City. Inside, however, was a different story.

"We're here," the burly driver said, unnecessarily.

Interrogator Vivienne Aloise Corben Dranguille had never been a woman particularly fond of smiling. With half her face swathed in medical dressings and the other half red raw, she wasn't about to break with precedent now. From her position on the back seat, she stared out of the window, taking in the litter-strewn pavement and peeling store fronts. The Lilac Quarter had seen better days. Like most cities in the Imperium, the governors of Brachius City told anyone who would listen that it didn't sleep. This, Dranguille reflected sardonically, was a lie. Certainly the Lilac Quarter slept, albeit at a different time to everyone else. She sighed and glanced at the chronometer display on the dash.

"Three minutes to noon," she murmured. "I wonder if he's up yet."

She watched a trio of spotty youths meander past, their coats daubed in the colours of The Black Weasels, a minor gang in the lacklustre mixture of extortion and petty crime that largely comprised Brachius City's underworld. Almost without conscious effort, she began running through ways of incapacitating the gangers in her mind and then stopped herself. This was silly.

She fixed her attention on the fourth doorway to the left from where she was sitting.

A discreet cough distracted her. "Our intelligence would suggest that the target is often most active in the hours from ten o'clock in the evening to five in the morning. That would seem to indicate…"

The voice trailed away as Dranguille turned slowly towards its owner who was sat in the back beside her.

Simon Dieter Weil was staring at her with earnest eyes that were only just beginning to display embarrassment. She waited patiently and was rewarded with the sight of the embarrassment spreading across his cheeks and down towards his wet, quivering mouth.

"Really, Herr Weil," she said casually, inflecting his honorific with the merest hint of disdain. "If you can't tell the difference between the private musings of a member of His Holy Inquisition and a direct question, you might as well pack your bags now and return to whatever dreary world you came from."

Weil looked away, his prominent adam's apple bobbing slightly as he swallowed nervously.

"Yes, ma'am," he murmured quietly.

Trying her hardest not to smirk, Dranguille scanned the interior of the car quickly.

"Right," she said briskly. "Set your vox to one of the close range two-way channels. Channel three should do. Monitor, but do not intervene unless I say so."

Weil was nodding quickly before Dranguille had even finished. He watched Dranguille reach under the seat and produce the gleaming black shape of a pump action shotgun. She handed it to Weil, who took it with a show of grim determination.

"You know how to use one of these?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"And have you ever used one of these?"

Weil licked his lips uncertainly. "Erm…"

"Never mind." Dranguille turned and placed her hand on the car door. "You probably won't need it, but stay alert anyway. Marchmont can be slippery and one or two of his associates are downright psychopathic."

Weil was probably nodding again, but Dranguille didn't bother looking as she got out of the car. She paused a moment or two to adjust the long black leather overcoat over her elegant red and black suit. She could have been a merchantwoman from the Ruby Quarter. Were it not for her face.

Unobtrusively, she checked the compact las pistol in her pocket, muttering a short supplication to its machine spirit. Her destination was only a few metres away and the youths she had seen earlier were at the other end of the street, but in this district it paid to be careful.

Casting a sharp glance around her, she strode off towards her quarry.

* * *

The ward was quiet, Achan Janner thought. He looked round slowly, an awkward motion given his restricted vantage point. He saw two beds opposite him, both empty, their crisp white sheets seeming even purer in contrast to the dull grey walls. When the Inquisition had commandeered this facility, interior décor had not been an overriding priority.

Janner knew that next to him, the bed was not empty. Sister Elinore occupied it and, although she had yet to regain consciousness, he found himself somehow comforted by her presence, by the simple fact that she remained alive. Beyond her bed, was another – also occupied, but Janner didn't know the man. He hadn't seen him move since he got there, though, and that did not bode well.

Glancing around once more, Janner shifted a little in his bed. He didn't like this. Ordinarily, there would be some kind of activity – an orderly changing sheets, a medicae-servitor administering drugs, something – but the ward was still and silent. Over fifteen years' service in the Adeptus Arbites had taught him the subtle differences between certain types of silence and this one was brittle and expectant, the kind of silence he had sometimes experienced on the front lines of a riot suppression. You waited quietly in full knowledge that some time soon you were going to use that shotgun in your hand and need the armour you wore.

Somewhere in this Inquisition facility, something was going on. If his arm hadn't been strapped up tighter than a ginjha bird on Ascension Eve, he might have been tempted to do something about it, but, with his arm being as it was…

His arm. Admittedly, he wasn't a medicae, but he'd seen enough combat injuries to know that, once a medic had made the decision to amputate a limb, they didn't wait nicely for the patient to get used to the idea. Yet it had been at least a couple of hours since his 'consultation' with Livia and there had been no sign of anyone coming to prep him for surgery. The conclusion was obvious: Livia and Thesk were attending to something – or someone – more important than him.

Frowning thoughtfully, Janner shifted awkwardly so he could see the bed next to his. Sister Elinore lay perfectly still – just as she had ever since Janner had been wheeled in here after triage. Her expression never changed; her eyes did not so much as flicker under their eyelids. Only the shallow movement of her chest suggested she was still alive. And yet there was a calmness, a serenity, about her that Janner found reassuring – even if he couldn't, at this particular moment, share it.

What exactly had happened up in the top floor of that mansion? Brecht had been as enigmatic and vague as usual, but Janner had known him too long to be taken in by his evasions. The fact that the Querins were politically powerful meant that Brecht's actions had long-reaching repercussions. Janner had the distinct impression, though, that the political state of Phrysia Secundus was not what Brecht was worrying about.

Janner winced as a dull pain flexed in his arm.

"Medicae!" he yelled. "Medicae!"

Within a few moments, a servitor trundled into view. Janner slumped back against his pillow in frustration. The servitors employed by the Inquisition's medical staff were nothing more than walking medicine dispensers, but this servitor surprised him.

"Sergeant Janner?" Its voice was grating, but relatively soft. It stared at him with an augmetic eye, which pulsed with an inner green light. "Is there anything the matter?"

"Pain," growled Janner. "In my arm," he added after he saw the servitor hesitate. It never hurt to be precise with your information when dealing with a medicae-servitor. "I think the anaesthetic's wearing off."

The servitor continued staring at him and then grated its reply. "I regret that I am unable to administer further pain medication for another thirty-four minutes and seventeen seconds." Janner glanced away, partly to hide his displeasure, but mainly because he found the lack of synchronisation between the servitor's voice and the movements of its bloodless lips disconcerting.

"I need to speak to Sister Livia," Janner muttered.

"Sister Livia is indisposed at present."

"Really? Why?" Janner fixed the automaton with a stare that would have had a human orderly quailing. The servitor's augmetic eye winked once and then again.

"Sister Livia is attending Inquisitor Brecht."

Eyes narrowing, Janner phrased his next question carefully. '"Is anything the matter with Inquisitor Brecht?"

"Inquisitor Brecht has been injured."

Janner felt himself grow cold. "How?"

"Information unknown."

"What status is the injury?"

"Information privileged. Code gamma clearance only."

Janner bit back an expletive. Another twinge of pain flared in his arm. He ignored it.

"What information can you give me?"

"Inquisitor Brecht," said the servitor, without the slightest trace of irony, "is being attended by Sister Livia."

Janner stared at the servitor for a moment. "Medicae!" he yelled at the top of his voice. "Medicae!"

* * *

The Phrysian sun was almost directly overhead as Dranguille walked along the grimy pavement towards Marchmont's club. The Lilac Quarter of Brachius City had once been a thriving commercial sector with easy access to the internal flitter port out in Woodholme. As sometimes happens in large Imperial cities, the flitter port fell out of favour with the trade guilds and the Lilac Quarter declined with it until those criminal elements wealthy and vain enough to be attracted to the district's fading glamour decided to move in. At least three minor gangs now operated out of the Lilac Quarter, one of which, Dranguille knew, was a proxy for the infamous Void Boys who were the closest Phrysia Secundus had to a worldwide criminal network.

And then there was Emile Marchmont.

In Phrysia Secundus' second city, Emile Marchmont had become a useful resource for those individuals and organisations operating just the wrong side of Imperial law. He was what the gangers called a 'snout', a source of information. Like the domesticated pigs which provided the staple meat for most of Brachius City's citizens not already on the breadline, Marchmont had his nose in every trough – the dissatisfied mutterings of mercs and gangers; the lamentations of minor officials with only a lifetime of penpushing and esteem-destroying ingratiation to look forward to; off-duty vigilators and PDF men: all were grist to Marchmont's mill. Rumour was that he even had a mole or two in the Imperial palace in Secundus Fortis, but Dranguille wasn't interested in rumour.

To her, Marchmont was just another source and, as far as she and Brecht were concerned, during the last twelve hours, he had become a decidedly suspect one.

As she walked with measured, confident steps towards the unobtrusive entrance to Marchmont's club, Dranguille considered the events that had led her here. It was Marchmont who had, through his network of contacts, drawn Brecht's attention to the extent of the cult's activities in Brachius City. It was Marchmont's right hand woman, LaFayette, who had supplied Dranguille and Kaspar Banacek with a list of the cult's leaders. And it was Marchmont himself in a furtive and decidedly tense meeting with the Inquisitor who had hinted at the connection between the cult and well placed politicos in the very highest echelons of Phrysian society. It was, thought Dranguille, the kind of information an Inquisitor like Brecht would never in a million years have been able to resist. Looking at it all with the benefit of hindsight, it all seemed too neat, too simple. The issue that needed to be settled now was whether Marchmont knew of the trap laid for Brecht or whether he too was simply a pawn in a wider game.

She came to a halt before the simple black door and closed her hand round her laspistol in her pocket. The warm noonday sunlight was causing the raw skin of her face to itch terribly and she grimaced. Best get this over with quickly. She rapped smartly on the door in a simple pattern – two short, one long and three short once more.

She waited a second or two – just long enough to start thinking about using the laspistol to blast open the lock – and was rewarded with the sight of the door opening on a shadowed stairway heading down into the basement of the building. A hulking shape filled the doorway and an ugly face dominated by two wickedly pointed implanted tusks glowered down at her.

"Go 'way," grunted the figure in barely comprehensible gutter Gothic.

Dranguille smiled sweetly. And regretted it. The soreness of her face reminded her that all attempts at feminine charm would be pointless anyway.

"I'm here to see Emile," she said as politely as she could.

The brute in front of her didn't seem to notice, the expression on his face not flickering. He thrust his head forward and, in the clearer light, Dranguille saw that, in addition to the tusks curving upwards from his lower jaw, the thuggish creature sported piercings in earlobe, eyebrow, upper lip and nose.

"Mistuh Marchmont won't see you," the brute growled.

"Oh, well," sighed Dranguille theatrically, shrugging her shoulders philosophically, "perhaps I could come –"

Always hit them while you're speaking. It had been a stormtrooper named Torland who had taught her that. She turned the shrug into a chop to the neck. The thug guarding the door reacted more quickly than a lot of other opponents in his position, bringing up his hand instinctively to deflect her strike. But that was alright, because her initial move was a feint. Lashing out with her left leg, she kicked the brute in the groin. As he involuntarily doubled over, she followed up the kick with a real punch to the neck and the bigger man toppled forward, face flushed with pain. Her laspistol was out of her pocket and pressed against his forehead before he had a chance to recover.

Dranguille stared down at him. Seeing that his eyes were clouding with pain, she reached down and grasped one of the tusks, pulling viciously. His eyes focused again. She had his attention. Thumbing off the laspistol's safety, she vented the pistol's first energy cell harmlessly. The pistol barrel glowed white hot for a split second and the charging mechanism made a suitably menacing whirring sound. She grinned and this time it didn't hurt at all.

"Yes," she hissed fiercely. "He will."


	21. Chapter 4b

It took five minutes before an orderly arrived, during which time the servitor trundled off to inform Sister Livia of Janner's displeasure. The orderly was young, thin and looked as if he'd just seen a Tyrannid Lictor close up. His hands were shaking, Janner noted, as he approached the bed.

"Y-yes, Sergeant?"

"What's going on?" Janner's arm was throbbing uncomfortably now, but this was more important than his ruined arm. The pain, however, leant him a fierceness that was proving useful.

"I don't know what you-"

"Don't give me that rubbish. Obviously, there's something going on or I wouldn't have been left here on my own, would I? Now, tell me, in the simplest terms you can, exactly what is happening in this facility that's got you so frightened."

The orderly blinked. For a moment, Janner thought he might actually begin to cry.

"The Inquisitor has been attacked, Sergeant."

"What?"

"By Mister Vollex. There was a quarantine." The orderly looked around him, as if seeing the ward for the first time. "You should have been informed and examined, but perhaps they didn't get here. It was all a bit chaotic. Yes, it would have been…"

"The Inquisitor?" snapped Janner, pointedly.

"Yes, of course. Sister Livia needed the Inquisitor's authorisation to terminate Mister Vollex. He was the source of the infection. I don't understand why. The Inquisitor went to see Mister Vollex and then…" The orderly shrugged and, again, looked as if he was about to burst into tears.

Janner shot him an icy glare. "I want to see Livia as soon as she's free. Do you understand me?"

The orderly nodded his answer and scurried away.

It was another thirty-five minutes until Livia entered the ward.

Janner stared at her.

"You look like hell."

The Sister Hospitaller folded her arms across her chest and smiled thinly. "Charming as ever, Sergeant Janner. What can I do for you?"

Janner paused before he answered. It was true. She did look awful. Her normally spotless white uniform was spattered with blood; her hair verged on the dishevelled, only held in check by a loosely tied band at the back. But, it was her eyes that seemed to have changed the most. Despite her quietly sarcastic tone, her eyes seemed to have dulled, the vitality in them receding to some hidden space within her. They were hollow. Haunted.

"I'm sorry," he said, softly, and then grimaced as a searing pain flared once more in his injured arm.

Livia moved to his bedside, slipping into an air of efficiency as easily as if it were an old overcoat. She checked his notes carefully.

"You're overdue for surgery," she said, briskly. Putting the notes down, she checked the intravenous line into Janner's arm and tutted to herself. "And your anaesthetic should have been replaced about ten minutes ago. My apologies, Sergeant. We'll have to do better."

Janner looked at her. "How is he?"

She straightened up and thrust her hands into her pockets.

"The truth? Medically, he's in a critical condition. He's lost a kidney and is in danger of losing the other unless he responds to treatment quickly. He's also lost an awful lot of blood, but that doesn't seem to be a problem. Our stocks are high and we've been able to replace it relatively easily. The truth is we've done all we can at this stage. The blade was deflected at the last –"

"The blade?"

Livia nodded, her gaze not quite meeting his. "His own. Vollex took it from him when he… turned." She shrugged. "Do you know if it was clean?"

"Sorry?" Janner's mind was reeling. While it was true that he'd never particularly liked Vollex (their respective backgrounds were too diametrically opposed to engender anything more than a healthy respect between them), the thought that he could have been corrupted so quickly and so totally was almost too much to take. That a man he had known and respected for the better part of twelve years, an Inquisitor no less, was even now fighting for his life was just as hard to comprehend.

"The dagger Brecht wore. Was it clean?"

"As far as I know. I don't think I've ever seen him use it, to be honest." Janner stared at Livia. "Vollex? Vollex tried to kill the Inquisitor?"

"Some kind of infection had changed him or..." Her voice trailed off and her eyes became distant. "No. I think it was more subtle than that." She shook her head. "I don't know." She smiled apologetically. "I'm not much use, am I, really? I'm sorry. I ought to get going." She smoothed back her hair with a blood-stained hand. "I'll make sure one of the orderlies preps you for surgery in the next hour or so. Thesk'll be operating."

Janner grunted. "I'd prefer it if it was you."

Smiling slightly, Livia said, simply, "I'm tired and I need to rest and, well, think."

Despite the pain now throbbing in his arm, Janner returned the smile. He glanced at her hands, saw the fingers worrying at a stray piece of thread on her tunic.

"And clean up, Sister. Don't forget that." He directed his gaze towards her nervous hands. "There's blood on your…" But something in Livia's eyes wouldn't let him finish the sentence.

"Tell me about it," she muttered, turning away to walk wearily out of the ward.

* * *

Music, as gritty and all-pervasive as the smoky air, drifted up the stairway as she descended. She'd left Marchmont's henchman unconscious behind the door, twenty-two milligrams of neo-ketamine bubbling happily away in his bloodstream. The laspistol was hidden in her pocket once more, her hand cupped loosely around its grip. The stairs were narrow and the carpet was worn slick in places but her progress was steady. She had, after all, been here before.

Marchmont would be in his office to the rear of the building, probably nursing a hangover. The man knew how to oil the wheels of business. Dranguille grimaced. The taste of the Kevlian brandy Marchmont had served at their last meeting still lurked at the back of her mind like a thief with a sledgehammer. Once was enough, thank you.

At the bottom of the stairs, she paused. The light here possessed a grainy crepuscular quality. Ordinary objects – a coat screwed up on a chair; a small drinks cabinet perched on spindly legs – seemed to loom into her line of sight. Having one eye covered didn't help, she supposed.

She could go one of two ways here. To her left was the main bar area. A pair of darkwood doors, their peeling varnish overlaid with a thin patina of grime, opened onto an assortment of tables, chairs and booths with a small bar on the near wall just to the left of the entrance way.

Two long strides took her to the doors and she opened one of them slowly so she could peer in undetected. She quickly saw she needn't have worried. At this time of day, there were only a handful of men in the bar – Marchmont's mostly, she realised – and they were too preoccupied to notice the door moving. They were all looking at the girl dancing on the small stage in the far corner, their attention held by her small, sinuous movements. The music was loud and earthy, a slow, subtle rhythm on which was built a simple, repetitive melody. Flecks of reflected light – evidence of some kind of skin dye or body paint, probably - glittered on the girl's skin and her eyes were directed demurely downwards as she danced.

Dranguille's eyes narrowed in distaste, but she silently reproached herself. Marchmont's business practices were not her concern at the moment and, besides, the girl was giving her as perfect a distraction as she could hope for. Satisfied that she didn't need to worry herself about the men in the bar area, she headed back the other way – towards the warren of private rooms and offices at the rear of the establishment.

She moved swiftly now, her laspistol out. Many of the rooms she passed were storerooms, their contents full of illegally acquired goods, most of them payment for one piece of information or another. Dranguille suspected that the goods didn't stay there for long. Marchmont's business dealings were legendarily complex. A shipment of lho received as payment for one scheme could easily be used as leverage for another.

A muffled sound brought her up short and she glanced around, sharply. In the stillness, she heard the sound again, this time more clearly. Someone nearby was sobbing quietly – although whether it was out of pain or frustration, she couldn't quite tell.

It wasn't anything to do with her, she told herself, but the inquisitive side of her nature just couldn't resist. There were two doors near her, both set into the left hand wall. She edged forward cautiously, her booted feet making little sound on the plush carpet, and examined the doors with a practised eye. One had a simple functional steel handle; the other sported a more decorative brass one. She tried the brass one. Locked.

The sobbing started again, this time more urgent. Dranguille shot the lock off and burst into the room, her pistol ready for another shot if needed.

What she saw brought her up short. The room was, as she had suspected, used as living quarters, although she hadn't quite expected the opulence that greeted her on her entry. Heavy drapes hung over hard wood panelling on the walls, the carpet was a deep rich blue and the bed that dominated the room was made from heavy Brachian wood, its thick mattress covered with sumptuous lilac silk sheets that shimmered in the subdued lighting. Tied to the bed and writhing like a particularly angry fish caught on a line was a dishevelled, distinctly feminine and oddly familiar figure. Eyes as dark as night glittered angrily at her and the muffled sound started again. This time there was no mistaking it for cries of pain.

And there was no mistaking the woman's identity either. The bronzed skin; the elaborate chiffon blouse and thin ruffled skirt; the chestnut hair tied back to keep it out of the sharp-featured, angular face; the glittering brooch – intricately worked silver, surrounding a sapphire as large as Dranguille's thumb – at her breast: this was Eloise LaFayette, Marchmont's second in command, confidante and, so Dranguille had often speculated, lover.

Dranguille covered the space between the door and the bed in three long strides and reached out to loosen the gag that had been tied around the woman's mouth. It came away easily enough and, for a brief moment, the two women stared at each other.

"What the hell's happened to you?" they snapped, more or less simultaneously.

* * *

She couldn't even begin to explain what had brought her here.

Livia stared at the door to Brecht's quarters, took a deep breath and pushed. It refused to give and she rested her head against its cool, metal, frustratingly unyielding surface and felt a tide of bitterness wash over her that was as painful as it was unexpected.

Of course it would be locked. What kind of a fool was she?

The kind that left an injured Inquisitor alone with a corrupted psychopath, the oh so detached and oh so bloody rational part of her mind reminded her. Thank you. Thank you very much.

She couldn't begin to explain why she was here, but she thought it might be something to do with looking for answers – answers that, even if he were conscious, Brecht would probably not provide. That was the problem with working for the Inquisition. Not only were they good at discovering secrets; they were just as good at keeping them.

And what secrets did she need to know? Well, the answer to that question was easy enough. She didn't need to know anything. She had been seconded to the Inquisition's facility on Phrysia Secundus for well over three years now. She knew her relationship with Brecht was not an equal one. Her role was clearly defined and very limited. So what did she want to know?

Livia closed her eyes and held her palms against the door. What she would like to know, she supposed, is just what had happened at the Querin mansion. No one had told her, but the injuries to Janner – las bolt to the upper arm and shoulder – and Elinore – superficial burning consistent with exposure to high voltage power lines and, oddly enough, extremely low temperatures – spoke their own eloquent language. But knowing what was not the same as knowing why.

Why had Brecht come out of the wreckage of the top floor of the Querin mansion with such slight injuries? Why had Vollex turned? Why did she have to be the one to –

She bit her lip and turned around, leaning against the door. And that was what was really troubling her. There was no use running from it any more. Her killing of Vollex had been violent and desperate. The muscles of her forearms and fingers still ached from the strain of tightening that little piece of plastic around his neck. Emperor, she could still feel the sensation of it biting into the flesh of her palms.

Was that what this was really about? She'd killed a man? Perhaps that was it, after all. She'd spent all her career trying to save life; if she was going to take it, she at least wanted to know why.

In the room behind her, something rattled gently. Livia stiffened and felt her heart quicken. That was impossible, wasn't it? There were plenty of Inquisitors Livia had heard of who kept odd, exotic pets, but Brecht wasn't one of them. She turned slowly to face the door again, bending her head low to try and hear more clearly. Seconds passed. She licked her lips, frowning. She must have imagined it. After all the stress of the last few hours, it was only to be –

The rattling sounded again, muffled but somehow harsh at the same time. She leaned closer, ignoring the fringe that flopped down into her eyes. The strange rattling sound had been longer this time, although she was still no closer to understanding what was causing it. Perhaps if she held her breath, tried to calm the urgent beating of her heart…

"Ah, Sister Livia. There you are!"

She leapt back from the door like a scalded cat and whirled to face the newcomer. Shoving her hands into her pockets, she tried her best not to look guilty as the tall, thin form of Adjutant Jerachin Smyre walked briskly towards her.

As far as she knew, Smyre was one of Brecht's longest-serving staff. Certainly, he had been in his post when Livia had first joined the Inquisitor's retinue three years ago. Yet, she knew almost nothing about him – other than that he was very good at his job.

Smyre was carrying a data slate and he glanced at it now. His thin, lined face broke into an unexpectedly warm smile as he looked up again.

"There are one or two things on which I'm afraid I need your decision."

Livia was taken aback. "My decision?"

"Yes. With the Inquisitor indisposed at present and Interrogator Dranguille absent on her assignment, you're the highest ranking operative currently on station."

"But Thesk –"

"Medicae Investigator Thesk has relinquished all claims to authority in this facility except when pertaining to matters of a strictly surgical nature." Smyre's grey eyes twinkled in the dim corridor lighting. "His exact words, actually."

Livia took a moment to digest this. She nodded slowly. "Alright, then. What do you need me to do?"

Holding out the dataslate, Smyre's tone of voice became, if anything, more deferential. "The most pressing matter is that of the current quarantine. A decision needs to be made on whether it should be extended to the surrounding environs, kept in place as is or lifted."

Thoughtfully, Livia took the dataslate and scrolled through the reports on it. "No other incidence of infection?" she murmured.

"No. But, then again, not everyone's been checked out yet. There is, of course, the chance that Interrogator Dranguille and her team might be carrying the infection."

Shaking her head, Livia said, "No, I don't think so. In fact, I don't think we're even dealing with an infection. At least, not in the pathological sense." She glanced up at him, eyes narrowing. "Has there been any word from Junior Magos Heirati yet? A sample was sent to his laboratoria for analysis."

Smyre frowned. "He's yet to file a report."

Livia returned the data slate to him. "Then I'm not making a decision until I've had one." She arched an eyebrow. "Does that seem reasonable, Adjutant?"

"Eminently so, Sister."

"Then I'll go and see if I can chivvy him along." Livia smiled as she turned away. "I like a challenge."

Adjutant Smyre watched the figure of Sister Livia walk briskly down the corridor and sighed the small self-satisfied sigh of someone who has performed a simple, yet profoundly significant task and done so to the best of his ability.

Tucking the dataslate under his arm, he was about to turn away, when he paused, keeping himself perfectly still. He glanced sharply to the door to Brecht's quarters. Had he just heard - ?

But the doorway remained silent and unassuming and, after a moment or two, Smyre moved away.

Approximately eleven seconds later, a muffled, rattling – like the sound a die might make in its shaker – skittered nervously on the surface of the corridor's stillness. By that time, there was no one around to hear it.


	22. Chapter 4c

"You first."

Throwing a dismissive glance at the woman tied to the bed, Dranguille retrieved the laspistol from her coat pocket and inspected it carefully. She fished an ornately-decorated handkerchief from inside the coat and wiped away a few tiny specks of grime from the barrel. It glinted in the soft lighting.

Finally, she fixed LaFayette with a sardonic smirk.

"No, I don't think so."

"At least untie me," the bound woman spat.

"You're hardly in a position to make demands and I'm afraid I don't have the time for lengthy negotiations." Dranguille held the pistol loosely in her gloved hand. Her expression hardened as she crossed the space between them in one stride and pressed the barrel of the gun against her forehead. "Why are you here?"

Her dark eyes flashing with anger, LaFayette bit back whatever sarcastic reply had first come to her mind and opted for a safer, albeit more sullen, one. "Emile. Emile did this to me."

Dranguille's smirk returned, threatening to swell into a full-grown sneer. "Lover's tiff, was it?" Her gaze fell to the ropes tying the other woman's arms behind her back. A further set also bound her feet. "Then again, I've heard he has unusual… tastes."

This time LaFayette didn't bother to stop herself. "Bitch!" She braced herself for Dranguille's reply, jaw jutting out defiantly, gaze fixed on the Interrogator's face, trying to ignore the cool metal pressed against her skin.

But, the Interrogator's response was not one of anger. "Oh, dear," she said evenly, amused disappointment shining in her eye. She shifted her grip on the pistol slightly. "I won't ask again. Why would Emile Marchmont leave his most trusted – and, it must be said, beloved – lieutenant trussed up on a bed?"

"I… I don't know." LaFayette shrugged and her eyes flashed with an intriguing mixture of anger and worry. Dranguille moved the pistol away from the other woman's head and waited. "We'd gone to bed early last night. We knew things would be quiet with the raid. No one wants to be out on the streets when the Inquisition is around, do they? Emile closed the club just before midnight. Soon after he woke up this morning, he went to his office and came back, I don't know, tense, worried – as if he'd only just remembered something he'd forgotten. He said something about Brecht having botched things. I don't know what he meant. We were going to get breakfast at the Carleon in the Magenta District, but on the way out he…" She stopped for a moment and her eyes narrowed. "The dirty pile of grox dung must have drugged me, because I don't remember…" She glared at Dranguille again. "Believe me, if he'd tried to take me fairly, I'd have broken his legs."

"I'm sure." Dranguille regarded the other woman for a long moment, weighing up the information she'd just heard. It didn't take her long to decide that LaFayette was telling the truth; it was simply too humiliating to be anything else. Quickly returning the pistol to her pocket, Dranguille strode forward and began untying the other woman.

"I suppose you're going to arrest me…" LaFayette muttered as first one then the other hand came free.

"Whatever for? Being careless enough to get locked in here? Or unlucky enough to have a slippery treacherous slimeworm for a lover?" With a sharp tug, the ropes binding LaFayette's legs came loose and Dranguille stepped back. "Besides, the Inquisition doesn't generally do arrests."

LaFayette stood gingerly and rubbed the circulation back into her wrists. Her dark eyes glittered in the gentle light. "Where to now?"

"Where do you think? Let's go and find your boss."

* * *

_To Serve The Emperor Is Enough_

The devotional posters, yellowed and brittle, continued to adorn the walls of the Hole – even this far down in its seemingly interminable depths. With a sudden – and completely irrational – thrill, Sister Livia realised that the corridor she was walking down was completely new to her. But, that wasn't surprising really.

Only Brecht and his closest subordinates had had reason to visit Magos Akados Heirati. Well, she reasoned grimly, with the Inquisitor fighting for his life several floors above her and his interrogators similarly unavailable, she would have to do. Her stride faltered as the implications of Smyre's words to her finally hit home.

".. the highest ranking operative currently on station…"

What did that really mean? Smyre had not exactly been forthcoming about just what her responsibilities now were. Were there prisoners languishing somewhere below her who needed… questioning? Interrogating? Torturing? She shook her head. It wasn't as if Brecht had an in-tray or even the kind of personal servitor that was so popular with certain factions of Phrysia's ruling elite.

What Smyre meant was very simple. She'd have to make it up as she went along. She had a sneaking suspicion that that was exactly what Brecht did anyway.

At that last thought, she allowed herself a weak smile. It was still lingering around the corners of her mouth when she came to a halt outside a pair of doors, the skull and cog motif of the Mechanicum emblazoned across them.

She paused, her palm flat against the cool metal of the door, reviewing exactly what she knew of Magos Heirati. Which didn't take her long. He had been here when she had first arrived from Alyssia. To the best of her knowledge, he hadn't left his laboratorium in all that time. He had a second in command who sometimes attended staff conferences, but she didn't know that techpriest's name. She didn't even know how many personnel the Magos had under his authority.

Livia grimaced, as she pushed the door open. It was good to be prepared.

And she wasn't. Not for this.

She walked into the laboratorium slowly, trying hard not to feel like a small child, trying hard not to gape in wonder at the sheer strangeness of what she was seeing. And failing utterly.

In some small corner of her mind, she had imagined what the domain of Magos Heirati would look like. She had imagined something similar to her own workstation in the sickbay – a clinical, gleaming whiteness, punctuated by flickering lights and whirring, burbling machinery. She had not imagined this.

What seemed like a lifetime ago, she had spent five years training in the vast Cathedra Hospital complex of Horonifex Prime. As a young, impressionable novitiate, she had come to a world of towering crags and shadowy canyons, where the indigenous population were not much above simple savagery.

Constructed of ancient granite and adorned with seemingly countless crenellations, the Cathedra complex squatted atop one of the many mountain ranges that dominated that world's southern continents. It was after she'd been there for three months that she'd found out about the cave system riddling the mountains' depths. It had taken her another month for her and two of her fellow novices to organise an expedition to the outer caverns. The sense of awe and wonder she had felt on entering those ancient caverns was the closest feeling she could think of to what she was experiencing now.

Just like the caves on Horonifex Prime, the laboratorium was a gloomy space, shrouded in shadows. She had a general impression of a high, vaulted ceiling, but it was impossible to tell, as what light there was in the place was far too feeble to illuminate it. Immediately before her were twin columns, forming a kind of archway. Where the columns in the caves of Horonifex Prime had been formed over many centuries and were composed of limestone, these strange structures, though no less irregular, were composed of mechanical and electrical components. They hummed with residual power and light pulsed softly in several places on their oddly gnarled and twisted surfaces. From somewhere, a sultry breeze was blowing, bringing with it a sour chemical odour.

As she moved forward hesitantly, passing through the archway and progressing into the laboratorium proper, indistinct shapes loomed out of the gloom, resolving into consoles and stations whose function she could not even begin to guess at. The remains of a long-defunct servitor sprawled across her path at one point and she tiptoed over it gingerly, trying to suppress the ridiculous and irrational notion that it might suddenly jerk into life.

Something buzzed and fluttered above her head and she involuntarily looked up, but whatever it was had fled back to the shadows. Growing more uneasy – and frustrated – with every passing step, she steeled herself and glanced around her.

"Hello? Magos Heirati?"

Her voice hadn't sounded too shaky and her eyes were getting more accustomed to this murky light, too. To her left she could make out a workbench cluttered with assorted components and instruments; at the far end of the workbench was a loose pile of cloth, rags perhaps or discarded protective robes. Then, the pile of cloth moved and her perspective changed again, as she saw the techpriest who had been bent over the end of the workbench straighten up and turn to face her.

Not that she could see his face. The rust red cowl of the Machine Cult hung low and cast thick shadows. The techpriest stood stock still for a moment and Livia swallowed.

"I've come to see –"

"Follow."

The techpriest's voice was low and dispassionate, laced with the merest hint of static feedback. She watched him turn on his heel and, without a backward glance, stalk quickly into the deeper recesses of the laboratorium. She hurried to catch up.

* * *

"How much did you know about the cult?"

Dranguille's voice was low, almost casual. LaFayette stiffened slightly, but didn't break step.

"Not much… well, alright, we knew their strength and we had a pretty good idea of how they were organized, but you know all this already, don't you?"

"Do I?" murmured Dranguille. "I'm not sure I know anything anymore now – not after this morning."

LaFayette turned to her curiously, her gaze lingering on the medical dressing pressed tight against the interrogator's face.

"What did happen?" she asked quietly.

"Chaos," said Dranguille. "Chaos happened." Her one good eye narrowed as LaFayette came to a halt outside a simple, unassuming doorway and reached out to open it. "Don't."

The dark-haired woman paused and glanced impatiently at her. "This is Emile's office, Interrogator. If you want answers, you'll find them in here."

"Will I?" asked Dranguille, scanning the doorway intently. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps there were things your precious Emile knew that he never told you."

LaFayette frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Is it always this quiet?"

"What? I… I suppose so. I don't know."

"Surely Marchmont has men on retainer, servants, dogsbodies, hangers-on? Apart from the few layabouts in the bar area, the only person I've seen in this place other than you is the thug you left on the door."

LaFayette swallowed. "This… thug you mentioned. Describe him to me."

Shrugging, Dranguille said, "Approximately one hundred and eighty centimetres in height and almost as wide. Bald, tusks. Nice touch that… What?"

LaFayette had paled. "That sounds like…" She licked her lips. "He's not one of ours."

With a quick, fluid motion, the pistol re-appeared in Dranguille's hand. "Prepare yourself."

"For what?"

"Absolutely anything." Smiling humourlessly, Dranguille opened the door.

She stood stock still for a moment or two, taking in the scene before her. Marchmont's office was small and unprepossessing. There was barely room for the desk, chair and filing cabinets. A small window behind the desk offered the promise of natural light, but, on this occasion, it was a promise it simply could not fulfil. Something dark had been splashed across the glass, throwing the room into a kind of murky half-light. Dranguille squinted. There was somebody hunched in Marchmont's chair; a curiously humped shape rested on the desk before it.

Dranguille took a single step forward and everything came into horribly clear focus. A sharp gasp from LaFayette told her that she was seeing exactly the same thing she was. The darkness that coated the window was blood. It seemed almost black in the dim light and, as Dranguille's vision adjusted to the gloom, she realised that it had splashed, dripped and run on almost every surface in the tiny room. It wasn't difficult to work out where it had come from. Emile Marchmont, she remembered, had always had clear blue eyes, eyes that probably made it difficult for a certain kind of person to resist or doubt him. They were looking at her now, but the head in which they were set was sat on the desk, some ten inches or so from Marchmont's body.

"Oh, Emperor!" breathed LaFayette, her hand flying to her mouth and her eyes widening in horror. "Oh, Emperor, no... Emile..." She made a small tentative movement forwards.

"Put the light on." Dranguille's voice was calm as she walked cautiously towards the body. She heard the sound of LaFayette scrabbling at the light controls and then the room brightened. It did not improve the spectacle in any way at all.

"That's nasty," said Dranguille, examining the corpse carefully. "The ragged nature of the incisions into the flesh of the neck suggest the head was torn – or possibly bitten – off." She began rummaging in her pockets. "If we can just get a sample for…" She glanced up. LaFayette was staring at her. "What?"

"You really are a cold, heartless excuse for a woman, aren't you?"

Dranguille shrugged. "Well, at least we know why he tied you up. He was trying to protect you. The question is – from what?"

But, LaFayette was turning away, unwilling to face the horror of her lover's death. Dranguille watched her for a moment and then returned to her examination of the corpse. After a second or two, LaFayette's strained voice broke the silence.

"Probably from whoever put that motion detector there."

Sharply, Dranguille glanced up and saw what the other woman was looking at: a small, unassuming metallic object perched on top of a filing cabinet, a tiny red light winking steadily.

"Damn," she muttered, her finger reaching for the voc bead at her throat. "Weil, get down here now. We've got trouble."


	23. Chapter 4d

The light in Magos Heirati's laboratorium seemed to move in odd ways. Livia's initial impression of entering a subterranean cavern of some kind was only reinforced by the unusual flickering patterns of deeply recessed indicator lights in the control bank to her right. The control bank itself was composed of different sections of machinery – cogitators, she assumed, though of wildly varied designs. This accretion of different components gave the impression that the console had grown over time like some bizarre toadstool. For Livia, the effect was somehow disturbing.

The journey hadn't helped, though. The tech-priest had said 'Follow' and that's exactly what she'd done. He had led her through small passages with towering banks of machinery on each side and then past a large shadowy space easily as wide as the length of the main ward in the sickbay area. This area had been occupied by the top half of some kind of construction servitor, its roughly machined limbs jerking and sparking fitfully as they passed. The tech-priest hadn't so much as looked at it, but Livia couldn't help letting her gaze linger on its bulky form. She'd gasped when she'd seen the still recognisably human face embedded into the servitor's chest. Not for the first time since entering Heirati's strange quarters, she'd found herself wondering whether the distinction between her own discipline and the work of the Adeptus Mechanicum was, in fact, as artificial as the limbs that spasmed and twitched in front of her.

Now, she was waiting. She had been waiting, truth be told, for the last ten minutes, the tech-priest having left her almost as soon as he'd told her to stay here. She was beginning to feel annoyed. The awe she'd felt on first entering this place had taken a long while to fade into the background of her mind, but it had now well and truly been replaced by a growing sense of irritation.

She drew breath with the intention of calling out.

"And what can I do for you, Sister?" Heirati's voice was so perfectly modulated it had to be synthetic. It had come from a point roughly a metre directly behind her. As she turned round to face him, she congratulated herself on the fact that she hadn't jumped out of her skin. She was, nominally at least, the tech-priest's superior and she didn't want to act like a complete novice when it came to dealing with him. At least she hadn't given herself away.

"Your heart is beating some 25.33% faster than is normal for a human being of your weight and gender, Sister. I see I have surprised you. I apologise."

Livia took a deep breath to steady her nerves and tried a smile. It felt decidedly false.

"No need to apologise, Magos. I appreciate you seeing me at such short notice." She looked at Heirati thoughtfully. As with the other tech-priest, the vast majority of his bulk was hidden by a scarlet robe. The hood, however, was lowered, perhaps in deference to Livia's desire to meet Heirati face to face. And what a face it was.

Having served as a Sister Hospitaller for a number of years, Livia was well used to augmetics and replacement organs, but Heirati's face was a stark reminder that, to the Adeptus Mechanicum, such techniques had a religious as well as utilitarian purpose. Much of Heirati's face was covered by a curving brass plate, which served as a housing for a number of augmetics. The most striking of these was a pair of bionic eyes, one a striking violet colour, the other a deep blood red. These mismatched eyes pulsed softly as their owner regarded her, the violet one a split second behind the other. For some reason that was not readily obvious, the face plate left a patch of greying flesh exposed on the left cheek close to where the mouth would be in a non-augmented human. Heirati's 'mouth' was represented by a small, circular grille, covered by a fine brass mesh. This grille was situated slightly left of centre, giving the face a decidedly lopsided look. There were thin mechadendrites – each about fifteen centimetres long – either side of the grille, although their function was unclear to Livia. They undulated gently as the Magos spoke again.

"I am gratified that you have decided to visit in person, Sister. It is unusual to see a member of the Inquisitor's staff here. The last such visit was 4.73 Phrysian years ago."

Heirati's voice stopped and it took Livia a moment to realise that he had finished speaking.

"Erm… quite." She looked around her, taking in the banks of arcane machinery. Something started whirring several metres to her right and then spluttered into silence. The urge to light up a lho-stick hit her suddenly with an almost physical impact in her gut. She smiled tightly and smoothed back her wayward fringe. "Interesting place."

"You have come to ask me about the sample taken from agent Vollex's body." Something fluttered in the inky shadows gathered above their heads. Heirati appeared not to notice. "If you would accompany me, I will share my findings."

Heirati turned and, as he did so, a small mechanical bird dropped down from the ceiling and landed on his shoulder. Livia stared at it for a moment, taking in the graceful sweep of its folding wings and the intricate curling engravings on its polished aluminium legs and body.

"That's impressive, Magos," she said, partly grateful for the opportunity to make small talk. "I don't think I've seen anything like it before. Is it a pet project of yours?"

The tech-priest half-turned to regard Livia and inclined his head sharply. "It is useful."

The gleaming bird still perched on his shoulder, Heirati led Livia deeper into the laboratorium.

* * * * *

Gaspar Torvald paced the silent med-bay worriedly, his fingers ruffling his hair in short, violent motions. With a number of orderlies attending Brecht in an isolated room down the hall, this area was oddly quiet. It contained two patients: Banacek, who was still heavily sedated after his violent encounter in the cells, and Elinore, whose body was fighting the effects of the alien toxin injected into her bloodstream in the under-governor's house. In a side room, Achan Janner lay anaesthetized; Medicae-Investigator Thesk was prepping himself for surgery in the operating theatre's ante-chamber. Torvald wasn't needed for the operation. Thesk had a number of personal favourites among the nursing staff and he wasn't one of them. Which was fine by him. Except –

Except something wasn't right with Sister Elinore and he had no idea what to do about it. Livia had disappeared into the deeper recesses of the complex and he wasn't sure whether he should contact her. It wasn't as if the Sister of Battle's life was in any more danger than it had been at the start of his shift, but something had changed. The readings were unmistakeable. And unusual.

He looked up as Mbeki, another junior nurse, possessed of a sharp wit and beautiful smile, walked in. Her deep brown eyes took in his agitation and she rolled them briefly, before sighing and moving over to him.

"What is it now, Gaspar?"

Torvald almost hugged her with relief. "Helene, it's Sister Elinore. There's something… not right…"

Eyes narrowing in concern, Mbeki moved to the sister's bedside and reached for the portable auspex. "Everything appears unchanged. Her heart rate is a little slower, but that's good. Her kidneys are functioning fractionally better, too, but she's still in danger of renal failure and her respiration is poor." She glanced at the sister and the medical mask that was regulating her breathing. "But all of this we already knew. I don't see what you're so upset about."

"The fifth sub-set down, Helene," said Torvald. "It's there."

Thumbing the controls of the auspex, Helene Mbeki found the information Torvald was referring to and raised an eyebrow.

"Traces of foreign material? That wasn't there before. The contaminants have been flushed out of her bloodstream. We're trying to help her body recover from their effects. There shouldn't be…"

"Look at the analysis."

Helene touched another control on the auspex monitor and swore. "Holy Terra! Traces of…"

"Gold," Torvald finished for her.

Mbeki looked up at him. "Have you performed a full examination?"

"On a Sister of Battle? On my own?" Torvald managed to look both embarrassed and offended at the same time. "No. I… er…" He smiled sheepishly. "It feels a bit too much like desecration, to be honest."

The dark-skinned nurse shook her head in amazement. "Fine. I'll do it." She bent over Sister Elinore's form, forcing up an eyelid briefly and then moving her fingers down to probe the sister's neck and shoulder. She grasped the edge of the sheet covering the sister's body and edged it down gently, while her other hand probed the muscles in the sister's forearm. She stopped abruptly as the sheet was pulled back further.

"Come here, Gaspar," she said, her voice strained.

Hesitantly, Torvald moved beside his colleague. "Emperor!" he muttered. "I swear that wasn't there when we brought her in."

Mbeki nodded slowly. "I know. But there's your gold."

Torvald stared at the exposed skin of the Sister of Battle's chest. In the centre, just above the fatty tissue of her breasts, was a glittering piece of gold, embedded into her flesh. It was approximately five centimetres across and fashioned in the unmistakeable shape of the aquila, holy symbol of the Imperium of Man. Mbeki and Torvald stared at it for a moment, before Mbeki carefully – almost reverently, thought Torvald – covered it with the sheet, her thin, delicate hands smoothing the material down gently.

"Well, what do you think?"

Mbeki bit her lower lip, brow furrowed in thought. "I don't know, but I'm betting she wore a pendant or something. Perhaps that what we're seeing now. We still have no idea of what went on in that house. Maybe some force somehow pushed the gold into the Sister's body and now it's being rejected and working its way out." She shrugged, weakly.

Twitching one corner of his mouth sceptically, Torvald moved away from the Sister. "I don't know, Helene. I think there's something else going on here."

"Then, what?"

It was Torvald's turn to shrug. "Something… spiritual?" He was half-prepared for Mbeki to dismiss this as fancy, but she didn't. Instead she turned to look at the sister, her gaze taking in the closed eyes, the re-breather mask, the gentle rise and fall of her chest. "You feel it, too, don't you? There's something about her." He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "Something… different."

Mbeki glanced back at him, her face serious. "Maybe." She sighed. "Look, we'll monitor it and see if there's any change over the next few hours. There's probably a rational explanation for this. Probably."

Nodding half-heartedly, Torvald folded his arms and fixed his troubled gaze on the unconscious Sister of Battle. "Rational. Yeah. Right."

Livia guessed she was now in Heirati's private research centre. A large workbench dominated this area of the laboratorium and towering banks of equipment, much of it apparently geared towards analysis and observation, on three sides guaranteed a greater degree of privacy than elsewhere in the Mechanicum complex.

Heirati reached up to a nearby shelf and placed a small, shallow dish on the bench. Livia noticed that it had been sealed by a thin plastic membrane. Heirati emitted a strange, squealing sound for a brief second or two and the mechanical bird hopped off his shoulder and perched itself on the bench a few centimetres away from the dish. The tech-priest looked up at her.

"This is your sample. It is now quite inert." Another squeal and the bird flew up from the bench and disappeared into the darkness of the laboratorium ceiling again. Heirati produced a sheaf of cogitator printouts from a drawer underneath the bench. "It was not so for much of the time we studied it. Our analysis of the data we gleaned from our examination of it is ongoing, but I am willing to share my initial findings." He handed her the printouts.

Livia took them from him. The top one was a graph of some kind. The information on it was plotted in a line that dipped and peaked irregularly and often very steeply.

"The time stamp for each data set is significant, Sister. If I may, I shall clarify what you are reading. The first sheet represents perhaps the most interesting finding. What you see before you is a recording of the sample's neurological output. It continues onto the second and third…"

"Hold on a moment." Livia looked up sharply. "Did you just say 'neurological'?"

Heirati regarded her blankly. "Indeed."

"But that implies…"

"The sample exhibited pronounced characteristics of brain activity across a range of electrical frequencies."

"It was… alive?"

"An imprecise, albeit understandable, question. It was capable of simulating a limited range of brain functions, yes. Whether that constitutes 'life' is an interesting philosophical question but not one I am qualified to answer." Heirati had withdrawn another set of printouts and he spread these out on the work bench before him. "This data indicates a marked similarity to the patterns of activity found in human subjects capable of displaying a number of psychic phenomena – most notably long range telepathy and telekinesis. The patterns are not identical, but they are similar enough to suggest a correlation between them."

The printouts in her hand were shaking slightly. She forced herself to focus on the data, turning the first and second sheets over.

"So… it was possibly sentient and psychic?"

"That is our working hypothesis."

Halfway across the third sheet, the line on the graph went flat. Livia looked up.

"When did this activity cease?"

"The time is given at the bottom of the page, Sister. It was, I understand, the exact moment of agent Vollex's death."

Livia stared at the graph. For a split second, she could not feel the paper in her hands; she could only feel the hard, smooth plastic of a length of intravenous tubing, growing slicker and slicker with hot blood. The papers fluttered down from her hands to the floor.

"I'm sorry," she said, bending down to pick them up.

"Of course," said Heirati, patiently. "Our current research into the sample suggests that it is no longer capable of producing such readings."

Livia smoothed back her hair and put the papers carefully on the bench. "Oh, really. And why is that?"

"Because the sample's composition is that of high-grade parchment, Sister. It has become, to all intents and purposes, a simple strand of paper."

"Oh, Emperor," whispered Livia. "The book."

Heirati stared at her. "You are referring to the item currently occupying a casket in secure storage area 12. I respectfully suggest you allow me to study it. If, as your reaction seems to indicate, you believe this object to be the source of contamination, a full analysis will undoubtedly be beneficial." He paused and waited, as if he'd asked her a question.

Livia looked at him and then at the shallow dish on the bench. She reached out for it. "You say this is harmless now?"

"That is a reasonable inference based on the data available to me."

Bringing the dish up to her eye level, she looked at its contents carefully. It was exactly as Heirati had described it: a simple strand of paper, perhaps three or four centimetres in length, slightly curved in the middle, stray fibres visible here and there on its surface. After a few moments, she looked up at Heirati and sighed.

"I wish Brecht were here," she said. She placed the dish back on the work bench. "I'm sorry, Magos. I'm not ready to agree to your request just yet. I need some time to think through the implications of what you've just told me."

Heirati inclined his head in acknowledgment of her decision. Another scrap of squealing binary emanated from his mouth-grille and the gleaming mechanical bird returned, swooping down from the ceiling, a small data wafer held in its metal beak. It landed a few centimetres from her and deposited the wafer gently onto the surface of the bench.

"This is a full copy of the research conducted on the sample as well as detailed preliminary conclusions," said Heirati evenly. "I trust it will help you achieve an appropriate resolution to your dilemma."

Pocketing the data wafer, Livia nodded. "I hope so, too."

* * * * *

Dranguille drew her pistol and opened the door a crack, shooting a glance down the corridor. LaFayette had moved to a battered metal filing cabinet on the far wall, taking care to avoid both slipping on the blood-stained floor and looking at Marchmont's body. Mechanically, she punched in the combination on the electronic lock set into the cabinet's surface and slid the top drawer open. Dranguille turned round.

"What do you think you're doing?"

LaFayette reached into the drawer and pulled out a small needle pistol; its curved design and elaborately scalloped grip suggested it was not of Imperial manufacture. She glared at Dranguille.

"If we're going to get out of this alive, you'll need help, Interrogator."

Dranguille looked as if she was about to argue the point for a moment, but shrugged and turned back to the doorway.

"Fair enough, but don't expect to walk out of here with that thing." She stiffened. "Movement. Get behind the desk. Wait for my signal." She flung open the doorway and fired two shots. There was a split second of silence and then the roar of autogun fire filled the corridor. Dranguille darted back inside and slammed the door shut.

"Damn. There's at least five of them. We need to get out of here." She looked pointedly at the window. "Where does that lead?"

From her crouching position behind the desk, LaFayette stared up at the Interrogator. "There's an alley behind the club; it leads to the market in Austerity Square. We'll never fit through the window, though." LaFayette glanced pointedly at the small square of glass set into the wall behind Marchmont's corpse.

Smiling grimly, Dranguille fired at the window, watching it warp briefly and then shatter. Glass glittered in the window frame in the early afternoon light. The sound of muffled movement came from behind the door. Motioning LaFayette to keep hidden, Dranguille whispered, "Then we'll do something else."

* * * * *

The morgue facility of the Hole was dimly lit, largely empty and, above all, cold. When Livia entered, she immediately began wishing she'd brought some kind of coat. Her breath became wisps of mist in front of her face. The data crystal Heirati had given her dug its hard edges into the palm of her hand. She couldn't really say why she had come here – other than an overwhelming desire to know.

There was only one attendant on duty and he was watching some form of ero-flick on a portable vid-slate. The only reason Livia knew this was that the frantic scrabbling for the 'off' button that her arrival prompted caused the hapless man to drop the slate and send it skidding across the cold stone floor towards her. She watched the flickering images for a moment, before the attendant hastily retrieved it and pocketed it.

"How… educational," she murmured, her eyes a few degrees colder than the surrounding air.

The attendant gulped and made a half-hearted attempt to smooth down his uniform. "How… how can I help you, Sister?"

Livia ignored him for the moment and stalked towards the row of large metal storage bays set into the far wall. She read the labels on them carefully, before finding the one she wanted and pulling it open. Satisfied with its contents, she turned back to the quivering attendant.

"Get prepped. I want to perform an autopsy on Vollex's body."

* * * * *

The door opened slowly and the first of the thugs entered the room cautiously. He was well-built, of average height and wearing the non-descript coveralls of a low-status maintenance worker. He took a bold step forward into the room and then stopped still when he saw the smashed window, lowering slightly the autogun he held in his hands.

"Frakk! She must have…"

From her vantage point hidden behind the door, Dranguille shot him in the back of the head and then threw her weight against the wooden door, trapping the second of the five assailants, who had been following on the heels of his companion, behind it. The first man's corpse dropped gracelessly to the floor. There were cries of pain and outrage from outside, but Dranguille ignored them. The trapped thug was pushing against the door, widening it inch by inch, struggling to bring the pistol he was holding to bear. Dranguille shot the hand off at the wrist and the man stopped pushing and started screaming, trying desperately to bring the exposed arm back behind the door.

"If you're quite ready!" grunted Dranguille, opening the door just wide enough so that the man's body was more exposed. LaFayette rose up from her hiding place and shot him in the chest, a ferocious snarl stamped on her features.

The impact of the needles overtoppled the dying thug and his body fell into the group of attackers in the corridor behind him. One of them went down, entangled by the stricken man's twitching limbs, but the other two had had enough warning to sidestep the grisly missile and were bringing their handguns to bear.

"Now!" screamed Dranguille, as she flung herself to the floor. LaFayette's needler whined and spat again and one of the thugs reeled as the shot slashed into his arm, his own shot smashing into the ceiling. The ganger on the floor was getting up, shoving the corpse of his erstwhile companion off him. Dranguille's pistol roared once, twice and the man fell back, two clinically round holes punched into his chest, their blackened edges smoking slightly. He slumped back against the corridor wall, a mask of comic surprise on his face. Dranguille didn't have the time to appreciate the effect. She was on the floor with two surviving attackers looming over her. She tried to slide away from them, but her back quickly bumped up against the hard wood of Marchmont's desk. There was nowhere to go.

The thugs raised their weapons. One of them was particularly ugly, a series of spiralling tattoos adorning his shaven head. From her position on the floor, Dranguille heard the whine of his laspistol, quickly followed by a yelp of pain from LaFayette. She began to bring her own weapon up, but the ugly ganger kicked it out of her grasp.

"I don't think so," he said, his voice surprisingly soft.

Rubbing her hand gingerly, Dranguille glared up at the men. Somewhere to her left, LaFayette was whimpering quietly. The tattooed man reached down to grab Dranguille by the coat. He held his pistol steady as he hauled her to her feet. She saw that his companion, left arm bleeding profusely from where LaFayette's shot had winged him, had similarly taken LaFayette; she also saw that the material of her blouse was charred along her right forearm, which hung limply at her side. The thug holding Dranguille leaned in closer. She could smell re-caf and a particularly vile brand of lho on his breath.

"Our orders are to kill you," he said, quietly. He brought his pistol up against the unblemished side of her face, pressing the barrel hard against her skin. "But there's no reason why we can't have some fun for a bit."

From across the room, his companion laughed. "Well, we might have to put a bag over her head first."

Dranguille tensed, but the eyes of the thug holding her hardened, the metal of the laspistol pressing deeper into her cheek. "I don't think so," he said. "No heroics today, lady." He moved the pistol slowly, tracing a slow path down her neck. "Just a lot of pain and then…"

All four occupants of the room heard the sounds of movement in the corridor outside. The thug holding Dranguille half-turned, the pistol pulled away from her neck by the motion and Dranguille acted instinctively. She bit down on the exposed flesh of the pistol-holding hand and punched the thug in the kidneys as hard as she could.

Grunting in pain, the ganger doubled over, but he was still holding her coat with his other hand and he took her with him. Dranguille tried to shrug out of the coat, but failed. Even in agony, the thug's grip was too tight. Frustrated, she struggled against him, raining blow after blow on his back and head, but still she couldn't break free. She was dimly aware of LaFayette struggling with her captor somewhere to the left of her.

And then the room exploded with the boom of shotgun fire. The section of Marchmont's desk just to the right of where she was standing dissolved into a hail of splinters. There was another deafening boom and suddenly Dranguille was drenched in blood and the tattooed ganger was toppling to the floor, still clutching her coat and dragging her down with it. Which is what, in the end, saved her life. A third wild shot smashed into the wall behind her, having travelled through the space she'd just been occupying.

She glanced up furiously to see Simon Dieter Weil standing in the doorway, Adam's apple quivering nervously, hands tightly gripping the shotgun as he raised it to his shoulder again. Finally succeeding in shrugging out of her coat, she stood up just in time to see the last remaining gang member, having turned to face the new threat, squeal like an animal as LaFayette stabbed him in the neck with a slim knife she'd procured from somewhere. Blood fountained from the wound and the man twitched and gurgled for several seconds before he eventually became still.

Weil swallowed. "Interrogator, are you al-"

Dranguille crossed the short space between them and held her hand out. "The shotgun please, Weil." Once she had the weapon in her possession, she leaned in close. "You are not – under any circumstances – to go anywhere near a weapon like this, until you have had the standard twenty hours' training on the range, understand?"

Weil nodded dumbly and tried to fix his gaze on a section of the floor that did not contain a dead body.

"You alright?" Dranguille glanced across at LaFayette, who was returning the knife to a concealed sheath on the inside of her boot.

LaFayette smiled through a face pale with pain and shock, holding her arm gingerly. "Yeah. I think this is just a flesh wound." She attempted a laugh, but it ended in a gasp of pain. "I'll be alright. I've had worse."

"Good. Great." Dranguille tiptoed daintily over the tattooed thug's corpse and smiled her sweetest smile before grabbing the other woman and shoving her against the wall. To LaFayette, the barrel of the shotgun was a gaping blackness and Dranguille's one good eye glittered above it like a malevolent star. "Now will you please tell me everything you know, this time. No gaps. No coy 'Oh, Emile dealt with all that' and no grox dung. Talk. Now."

* * * * *

Lights winked steadily on medical auspex boards. The soft hum of a medicae-servitor's internal workings was the only thing audible in the white-walled room.

The figure in the bed was virtually still, his breathing so shallow as to be almost undetectable. An intravenous drip fed a clear solution into his arm. A picture of an eagle, its claws gripping a stylised representation of Phrysia Secundus, was positioned above the head of the bed, the harsh light reflecting from its laminated surface.

Lank and lifeless, Brecht's hair was dishevelled, stray wisps of it plastered down against his clammy forehead. The scar on his face was dark and thin, a single crack in the porcelain surface of his too-white face. His mouth was slightly open, the dry lips sticking to each other around a ragged splotch of darkness.

With a slow, deliberate movement, the medicae-servitor turned its head to survey its patient for a duration of twenty seconds – just as it had been programmed to do. Its instruments whirred and chirped, recording its patient's condition and cross-referencing that information with prior recordings from five, ten, fifteen and twenty minutes before. Finding no change, the servitor's head swung back and it resumed its silent vigil, quiet, unmoving, uncomplaining. Unimaginative.

In Inquisitor Brecht's brain, however, something moved. Neurons sparked and synapses shivered with their passing. While his body lay sleeping, his brain awoke to a world of dreams, nightmares and visions.

* * * * *

"Not here."

Dranguille scowled. "You really aren't in a position to negotiate."

"You want me to talk? Fine. But not here. It's not safe." LaFayette's eyes were desperate. "Please, surely you can see that?"

Dranguille bit her lip for a moment. And lowered the shotgun. "Give me the knife." She held out her hand and watched LaFayette reach into her boot and withdraw the weapon. She handed it over wordlessly and Dranguille pocketed it quickly. Gesturing with the shotgun, she motioned for LaFayette to lead the way out of the room. Weil made to follow her, but Dranguille stopped him.

"No. I want you to vox Arbites Commender Dahlquist at the House of Justice and tell him to get a tech team down here right away. Use the codeword 'adumbrate' in your transmission and you shouldn't have any trouble. Stay here and supervise the team he sends. Report to me as soon as they find anything unusual, suspicious or significant."

Weil nodded, glancing at the severed head on the desk for a moment. Wisely, he chose to remain silent.

"Think you can handle that?" Dranguille asked. "If there's any trouble let the Arbites squad do the shooting, yes?"

Weil coloured and nodded again.

"Good. I'll look forward to hearing from you."

Dranguille led LaFayette out of the room and down the murky corridors of the club. It wasn't long before she was climbing the stairs up towards the street. The tusked thug who had been on guard duty earlier was just beginning to stir, the neo-ketamine having worn off inordinately quickly. The man must have had the constitution of a bull grox. Smiling, the Interrogator pulled out her laspistol and shot him in the knee. His howls of agony were still echoing around the street, as she and LaFayette got into the waiting car and, with a smooth, tight turn into an empty side street, they headed back to the Hole.

* * * * *

The autopsy began easily enough. Vollex's body was smooth, devoid of the thin, silver filaments that had thrashed and whipped about during his attack on the Inquisitor. Ugly welts that dug deep into the flesh of the neck were the only visible sign of the violence of his death. Livia avoided them assiduously, keeping her focus on his chest and abdomen. Apart from gang tattoos on forearms and shoulder, his skin was clear. There was no sign at all of the burn marks she had examined earlier.

Underneath the skin of the torso, the situation was similarly unremarkable. Each of the major organs was removed and weighed without incident, the attendant having produced a set of digital scales with commendable speed. Livia still hadn't asked him his name, though, and had no intention of doing so.

"Any sign of infection or contamination?" Livia asked.

The attendant was examining Vollex's liver. He looked up at her from behind his mask. "I take it he drank a fair bit. There's some mild cirrhosis, but that's about it." He placed the organ on a plastic tray and shrugged. "What are we looking for, Sister?"

"I'm not really sure, to be honest." She pursed her lips thoughtfully, hunching over the corpse on the slab. The exposed chest cavity gaped hollowly before her, empty of both its contents and any clue as to how Vollex's body had changed so rapidly. And now reverted back to its original state. Unconsciously, her gaze flicked up to the former agent's face and her thoughts took a morbid turn.

How fragile life could be, she thought. How easily a lifetime of devotion and service to the Emperor could be turned to the cold stillness of death. She had joined the Order to champion life, to hold back the grim spectre of death through the power of her faith in the Emperor and her medical training. And now she had broken a vow that should have been sacred. The marks on Vollex's neck, their anger dulled by the cold and slow clogging of veins, were mute but irrefutable proof of that. But she had done what she'd had to, hadn't she? Surely, the Emperor could not –

"Sister?"

She turned quickly, snapping out of her reverie. "Sorry?"

The attendant had moved to stand the opposite side of the slab, near Vollex's head. "I said – what's that?"

Curiously, Livia bent over Vollex's face. The little man's eyes were open. In the corner of the right one, there was something…

"Fetch me the forceps. Number 2."

As if from a distance, she heard the attendant scurry away to the instrument tray. Her attention was fixed on the eye – or, to be more precise, the small opening of the tear duct. Was there something stuck there? What was that?

She took the forceps from the attendant wordlessly and reached down with it, probing the skin around the eye gently, forcing it down, so that the tear duct was wide open. There was something protruding from the duct, something thin and white, perhaps a millimetre clear of the surrounding flesh. Slowly, she reached forward with the forceps and grasped it between the two metal tines, pulling gently. It came free easily enough. She pulled again and gasped, horrified. The hand holding the forceps was suspended seven or eight centimetres above the dead agent's face. A thin unbroken strand of dirty white matter bridged that gap, taut and straight in her grasp.

"What the hell is that?" the attendant whispered.

She pulled again and something tore in Vollex's face. The white strand came completely free, its end dripping slow, semi-congealed blood onto the dead man's face. Livia examined it carefully, her brow furrowed.

"I think," she said slowly, "it's paper." She handed the forceps and its contents to the attendant. "We haven't opened the cranial cavity yet, have we?"

Marching over to the instrument tray, she selected the las-saw and activated it. A bright blade of pinkish-red light erupted from the functional metal and rubber grip. Holding it firmly, she positioned herself behind Vollex's head and began to work, the attendant looking on with a horrified fascination. After half a minute or so, the top of the skull was loosened enough for Livia to lift it off. Deactivating the las-saw first, she handed it to the attendant and carefully prised away the detached portion of the skull. Something white glinted in the darkened cavity.

"Oh, Emperor…"

With a soft hissing sound, the contents of Vollex's skull spilled onto the mortuary floor. Livia leapt back and saw a mass of white dripping from the brain cavity and she knew instinctively what it was. Vollex's skull had been packed with spooled tangles of white paper, roll upon roll of it, all jumbled and mixed together. She watched as the paper fed out and stopped, hanging from the bone-shrouded darkness like a white, shredded veil. The paper lay on the floor in disordered clumps. It was perfectly dry. There was no blood, no brain fluid – just thin, slowly uncoiling strips of dry white paper.

Trembling, she bent down to pick up a strand of the quivering white stuff. And gasped. The paper had not been blank. There was writing – heavy gothic script, tiny and precise – stamped onto the surface. She glanced up at the attendant and then looked down again, scarcely able to believe what she was seeing.

"What… what is it?" he asked.

"It's a message," whispered Livia, her eyes wide. "Over and over again…"

…_He is coming He is coming He is coming He is coming He is coming..._


	24. Interlude 4

**Interlude**

**Adyria Six**

There are whisperings in the deeps, murmurings in the forgotten places of Hive 13. Something is stirring. Something is rousing itself from a centuries-long slumber. It is a flicker, a gasp, a wavering shadow on a broken wall; it is the memory of anger, the rumour of revolution. It is the steadying breath before the long dark fall.

It slithers through the sand-clogged arteries of the undertown, passing from one ruined, misshapen life to the next. It is a subtle virus of unrest, the long-forgotten ghost of ill intent, a sand-muffled echo of searing, violent rage.

Today is the day, they say. Hearsay follows hard on the heels of gossip and rumour, but the wise mothers - oh, how many of them stare from tear-streaked faces - and the wild things in their rags and feral markings all agree. Today is the day power will visit The Sink. The word trickles down like the sand through the cracks in the dark, ancient sky. Beggars and butchers, strumpets and seers: all hear it; all believe.

Today is the day.

* * *

Commander Kirrim steps from the elevator and takes in the sight that greets him. He does his best not to let his distaste show, but it is difficult. The Sink is a byword for hardship and squalor; its alleyways and shadowy corners are home to every kind of vice and depravation imaginable. While he is well aware that every large conurbation in the Imperium has its less desirable areas, the gap between knowledge and experience is large enough for him to doubt the wisdom of coming here in person.

A sec-officer, one of the new ones by the look of his too-grim face and restless eyes, greets him by the entranceway. He salutes crisply and Kirrim returns it, nodding firmly in an attempt to impart some small measure of his confidence to the younger man. All will be well. No need to worry.

"Lieutenant Barr, my lord," the sec-officer says by way of introduction. "The body was found a couple of hours ago." He leads Kirrim and his retinue away from the lift shaft. "The gangers wouldn't touch it. I think one of the collectors called it in."

Kirrim nods, but he knows the Hive well enough to understand the significance of that information. In The Sink, nothing is wasted. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is left alone. Till now. He glances about him, notes the isolated knots of underhivers standing on the edges of the thoroughway. It is only natural, he supposes. His presence here is a significant event in the lives of these desolate, desperate people. Briskly, he follows the sec-officer to a section of The Sink cordoned off and guarded by three sec-guards in dull, black carapace armour, riot guns held in the ready position across their chests.

"In here," says Barr, not looking at Kirrim, but past him for a moment, before he turns away into the darkness of a long-disused access pipe.

Kirrim enters through a large rent in the rusted metal. The air is slightly cooler in here. Light spills through ragged holes in the pipe's casing; dust and sand dance and swirl in the milky beams of radiance. Shadows pool around the commander's feet, their edges hazy and indistinct.

A little self-consciously, Barr kneels down by something huddled on the floor. He looks up at his superior and, for all his training, for all his discipline, his eyes shine with an uneasy wonder.

"This is the first one we've found." He moves aside to let Kirrim see. "I don't think it's dustwings."

Crouching down slowly, Kirrim snorts. "Dustwings don't ex- no, no, it's not dustwings."

The thing in front of him was once a man. That much is clear. Scraps of clothing, roughly machined but still recognisable as man-made, cling feebly to off-white bone. There is a skull, a battered spine, hollow ribs, a pelvis, the truncated ruins of arms and legs. Sand has risen in small clumps around the corpse, as if intent on dragging it away to some dark, forgotten place - as if there were some place more dark and forgotten than this.

Reaching forward cautiously, Kirrim prods the naked bone. And snatches his hand away, hissing sharply. The bone is cold. Ice cold. He rubs his fingertips vigorously and glances up at the nervous sec-officer.

"Do we have an ident?"

"Yes, my lord. He was carrying this." A thin square of plastic appears in the sec-officer's hand. It catches the light for a moment, glistening, each grain of fine sand clinging to its surface transformed into tiny fragments of diamond or glass. "Pol Garren. He's a maintenance boss out of Refinery 17. I've no idea why he was down here."

Kirrim's gaze is sharp. "Don't you? Have you checked for narcotics? Obscura? Voult? Whatever he was here for, it wasn't to take in the view, was it?"

Barr lowers and then shakes his head, mumbles, "No, my lord."

The older man straightens up and points to a nearby guard. "Have this bagged and taken back to the Sector House. I want a full autopsy report on my desk by this afternoon." He scowls at Barr. "We're going. I don't want to stay here any longer than is strictly necessary."

"Understood, sir."

Turning sharply on his heel, Kirrim leads his party out of the ancient pipework. And stops. Perfectly still.

All around him, people have gathered. They are ragged and dissolute. Some are clothed in the greasy ruins of garments; others are virtually naked, scars, tattooes and piercings their only adornment. They are tall, short, gaunt, heavy-set, old, young, male, female. But they are, Kirrim realises with a shock, all the same. The same brooding stare; the same expectant tension in their limbs; the same hardened set to their different mouths. They wear their desperation like a uniform; they are marked by it, bound by it. They observe him with hollow eyes.

Kirrim looks for a way through. They are not a mob. Not yet. They stand in isolated clumps, associated but not quite joined together. Keeping his gaze fixed firmly on the people around him, he mutters softly to his subordinates. "Stay close. No sudden moves. Follow my lead."

Kirrim understands instinctively. This is now a matter of power. He steps forward calmly, confidently. Firmly, but not roughly, he begins to push his way through the knots of people. Behind him, his guards bristle with tension, their eyes restlessly scanning the Sink-dwellers around them, looking for the first sign of the trouble they know will come.

"Make way," Kirrim says softly, over and over again. "In the Name of the Emperor, make way." The crowd parts slightly; individuals shuffle aside, their eyes fixed on the small procession in their midst. Kirrim begins to sigh with relief, begins to think they might all just get out of this. And then the muttering starts.

Scraps of sentences reach his ears. It is almost as if some restless wind snatches the words from the Sink-dwellers' mouths and flings them haphazardly at the foreign party in their midst.

"What..."

One of the guards starts at the sudden murmuring, readies his riot gun. His thumb clicks the safety catch, eyes roving urgently over the pressing crowd.

"... have you done..."

A woman's voice, screeching, louder than the rest. The guard finds her, sees the mouth contort in an anguish that looks so much like hatred.

"... with them?"

The crowd breathes out its pain. It hangs in the air as an almost visible thing, a smoky miasma of torment and heart-rending loss. The woman is screaming.

"What have you done?"

The refrain is taken up, repeated over and over again, a mantra of despair so sacred that to utter it feels like blasphemy.

"What have you done with them?"

The woman is screaming, tearing at her rags, spittle gathering at the corners of her mouth. The guard's finger tenses on the trigger, his eyes wild. He is not invulnerable to the scratching of bony fingers, to the hammering of desperate fists. Armour can be ripped away. Skin can be torn. Blood can be spilled.

"What have you done with the children?"

The question hits Kirrim like a slap in the face. It is only now that he sees how few children there are in the crowd around him, remembers how few children stared from the hovels and gutters as he walked past them.

"I don't know..."

Behind him, oblivious to him, the guard sees the crowd surge forward. His finger squeezes. Hard. And the woman's chest erupts in a gushing torrent of searing red.

"Cease fire!" screams Kirrim, angrily. "Cease fire!"

His words echo in a sudden silence as deep and profound as any found in that vast black emptiness between worlds. The vacuum holds for a moment, its skin quivering taut against an unnameable tension gathering in the eyes and the mouths and the hands of the people around them. But it is more than just their despair that binds them now.

Now there is anger.

The sound rushes in unexpectedly. It issues from many mouths in a variety of pitches and intonations. But Kirrim and his small, vulnerable retinue understand all too well that they are hearing one voice, one word, one scream of primal rage.

Moving swiftly and blindly, the mob lashes out. A guard goes down under a tidal wave of bodies, fist after fist after fist striking his head, his arm, his chest. He feels the impact of a kick against his knee, feels the sharp dagger of pain slash its way up his leg. The air is close with bodies; the dim light occluded by faceless shapes breathing their hate over him. Their sweat is in his nostrils, the rich metallic taste of their anger is in his mouth. The gun has gone, spinning away from his desperate hands. Something tears at the exposed skin of his neck; fingernails gouge and rip. Hot blood leaps from an artery. He screams his agony. Something grips his tongue. And pulls.

"With me! Now!" Kirrim, desperate, drawing his bolt pistol, screams at his men, helplessly watching another and another disappear into the mob, swallowed whole. He catches sight of the lift entrance a meagre fifty yards away. It might as well be fifty light years.

Barr is firing. Every shot hits. The air is infected with a fine red drizzle, baptising the upturned faces of the mob in their own blood. Someone grabs the barrel of the gun. He fires again and the hand disintegrates into meat and blood. But another hand reaches out. The clip runs out. He scrabbles desperately at his belt for more ammunition, but someone is holding onto his hand in a grip of iron, forcing it back, leaving his chest exposed. Fingers work at the clasps on his back and he feels the horrible looseness of the armour around his abdomen. Horrified, he sees the glint of a blade; there is absolutely nothing he can do to stop its swift silver plunge into his side.

Kirrim watches Barr die a mere metre away from him. He stares at the crowd in horror.

"I'm sorry," he pleads, even as they jostle and shove against him. "Whatever it is you think we've done... I'm sorry. Please, I'm so sorry..."

But the mob is deaf with the sound of its anger. Roaring and crashing like waves upon a beach, they surge around him, sucking him down into the churning swell of desperate, instinctive violence.

Then he, too, is gone.


	25. Chapter 5a

**Chapter Five**

From the outside, the Hole appeared to be nothing more than a dilapidated manufactorium, the uniform grey of its crumbling brickwork scarred by slender lines of creeping weed and brown-edged ivy. Long, thin windows gaped open, their glass long since smashed, splinters of darkness lodged in the building's skin. High above, a handful of lean crows described desultory circles around the flat roof, oblivious to the automatic weapons systems discreetly hidden there.

A high wall surrounded the shell of the surface building, rusted barbed wire sprouting along its length and a large pair of simply wrought iron gates barring entry to the casual intruder. Wild grass, heavy with hairy seeds, swayed drunkenly in the breeze alongside a wide, pitted roadway that bisected the empty space between this outer wall and the inner building. The track was wide enough to accommodate a Chimera transport comfortably and led to a large doorway in the building's front, a recessed portal that never opened. There was only one way into the Hole from the ground and the roadway wasn't it.

Two and a half kilometres away, a black, unremarkable groundcar entered the underpass leading from Brachius City's bustling Magenta Quarter to the city's ageing monorail complex. A few hundred metres into the underpass, it turned smoothly onto a small access road, branching off from the main highway. After its ident signals had been verified by a series of automatic scanners set a further hundred metres into the ceiling of the access tunnel, a section of wall to the groundcar's right swung away with a groaning hiss of hydraulic power. The groundcar swung into the resulting opening, its driver switching its headlamps onto full beam at the same time.

In the back of the groundcar, Interrogator Vivienne Dranguille thumbed her voxbead.

"Smyre, this is Dranguille. Tell the Inquisitor I have a present for him, although it's not the one he-"

Involuntarily, she brought her finger up to the receiver embedded in her ear, the low, urgent voice of the Hole's adjutant filtering through to her brain like ice cold water. She glanced at LaFayette, hunched in the seat next to her.

"Smyre, slow down. What the hell are you talking about?"

* * *

The air was cold and, for a moment, he felt nothing. A curious sense of disembodiment threatened to overwhelm him. Then, he breathed in and sensation flared painfully in his mouth, tongue and throat. His lungs burned with the coldness of that breath and, as if kicked into wakefulness by that shocking inhalation, his brain became suddenly overwhelmingly aware of the rest of his body.

Goosebumps peppered the exposed skin of his legs and arms; something wet and cold slid and squelched under his back as he shifted his weight experimentally; there was a warmth on his face and chest that seemed at odds with the coldness he was feeling in his extremities.

What was going on? Where was he?

He breathed again and, again, a sliver of cold air plunged into his chest like an assassin's dagger.

Dagger.

For some reason, that word seemed horribly and painfully important. Slowly, for they were gummed together, he forced apart his eyelids. And winced. The sky was a pale, washed out blue, smooth and fragile like the shell of some exotic bird. Two suns hung in the sky – one a large and watery pinkish yellow, the other a fierce orange disc, burning ferociously in his vision.

Where was he?

He flexed his fingers gingerly. They were heavy and distant, but they moved feebly. That was something, at least. Without really thinking about it, he half-turned to look at them and felt powdery snow brush against his cheek. Again, his body shifted wetly under him, but his eyes were making sense of his surroundings now.

He was lying on snow-covered ground – freshly fallen snow by the look of it, although the sky was clear of cloud. He looked at his body again and sighed. He was lying naked on snow-covered ground. Great. Carefully, he pulled himself up into a sitting position, turning his head to survey the land around him.

White everywhere. A vast uneven expanse of it stretched away from him on all sides. No mountains. No sea. No significant geographical feature to speak of. No sign of civilization.

He pulled his feet up under him, hugging his legs to his body, rubbing his numb hands against them, trying to desperately to generate some warmth. His fingertips were the same light blue as the sky. That couldn't be good.

With an effort, he pulled himself to his feet, teetering unsteadily on legs apparently unused to such exercise.

How long had he been unconscious? Why was he here? The last thing he remembered was –

He frowned. No, he couldn't remember anything. Not really. Vague images lurked on the edge of his conscious mind, but they were as insubstantial as the scraps of mist that escaped his mouth with every exhalation.

This was no good. He had to find shelter, had to start moving. But in which direction should he move?

A howl, high-pitched and echoing, sounded behind him. Once again, he felt the stirrings of remembrance within him, but, once again, he found precise recognition maddeningly elusive.

"At least I know which direction not to go in," he muttered to himself, forcing his legs to move – one after the other – carrying him away from the menacing howl that echoed again across the snowbound wasteland.

* * *

Livia was waiting for them in the Hole's transport pool, her slender form flanked by two heavily built stormtroopers, assault rifles cradled in their arms. The underground hangar was lit by bright fluorescent strips which bathed the stationary vehicles, including a battered guard issue truck, in a harsh, sickly light. The groundcar purred to a slow halt, the driver switched off the engine and Dranguille flung the door open, dragging LaFayette behind her.

She stalked up to Livia, scowling.

"Believe me, Sister," she said. "I don't need a medic."

Livia regarded her coolly from underneath her fringe. "No, but you'll need answers." Her eyes flickered over LaFayette, her expert gaze taking in the way she was holding her wounded arm. She turned to the guard to her right. "Escort the prisoner to cell 34-A. Ensure she is fed and watered, and have someone patch her up. The Interrogator and I will deal with her shortly."

Dranguille watched LaFayette being led away, her shoulders slumped. She supposed the criminal hadn't really understood the implications of surrendering to the Inquisition, but she suspected she was beginning to now. Adjusting her eye dressing absently, Dranguille turned back to Livia.

There was something different about the Sister, she realized. Something in the way she carried herself, back straight, hands clasped behind her. Something in her eyes. Something hard, brittle.

"Sister, what's going on? Smyre said something about Brecht being attacked. He said you were in temporary command." Dranguille licked her lips, uncertainly. "What… what's been happening here?"

Livia's answering smile was utterly without humour. Then, she told her everything.

* * *

Another howl, long and mournful, split the chill air and sent a knot of fear tumbling and unravelling in his gut. He had no idea how long he'd been trudging through the loose snow, but a comprehensive, strength-sapping tiredness had settled on his limbs. His eyes were half-closed against the glare of the snow and it had been increasingly difficult to resist the temptation to close them fully, drop down in the snow and give in to the weariness that was threatening to overwhelm him. The howl of the unseen beast that had been following him ever since he'd woken up in this seemingly endless waste put paid to those thoughts now. At least, for a while.

Glancing furtively around him, he quickened his pace. And swore, as his foot once again came down on something hard and sharp-edged covered by the deceitfully pure snow. He stopped and, balancing awkwardly on one leg, tried to bring the injured foot up so he could see just what damage had been done. His stomach lurched, as he toppled over and landed on the cold ground , scraping his side against yet another hidden stone.

"By the Emperor!"

The Emperor? Emperor of what? Of who? He had no idea, and yet the title had come as easily as the word 'warp' had the last time he'd tripped and fallen.

Gingerly, he felt his side with numb hands. The fingertips came away wet with bright red blood. Wonderful.

Again, he glanced around him and noticed, with a sudden start, that the landscape had changed subtly while he had been walking. The ground ahead was darker, splotches of mud showing through the thin covering of white. Wisps of mist drifted across them and the air, he realised, had acquired a distinct smell of sulphur.

His unseen pursuer howled again, this time much closer. All thoughts of his injury obliterated by the fear that threatened to possess him, he scrambled to his feet and turned in the direction of the sound. And stopped, his mouth suddenly dry.

For the first time, he could see the creature. Not clearly. Not yet. But its black silhouette was easily visible against the white snow. At the moment, it was a dark blot, but it was moving at a ferociously quick pace.

Heedless of the hidden stones that threatened to trip him, he began to run, the tiredness sloughing from his limbs like the skin of a snake, replaced by a fierce, desperate urgency.

"Brecht's dying."

Livia sighed and then shrugged. "Probably. I don't know." She leaned forward across the table. "I do wish you'd let me look at that dressing. Or at least give you some anaesthetic. It must be stinging terribly."

"I'm fine." Dranguille's tone was clipped, her mouth a tight line. Her eye narrowed with an anger that was beginning to look disturbingly like contempt. "And is that the best you can do? 'Probably'? What kind of prognosis is that?"

"I can dress it up for you in medical terminology if you'd like, but I thought you'd appreciate something more direct."

Livia settled back in her chair and glanced around the room. Smyre was hovering near the door of the conference chamber, his eyes widened with worry in the otherwise placid mask of his face. He hadn't contributed to the conversation yet. It occurred to her that, in making her the base's temporary commander, he had foregone his customary neutrality. It occurred to her that he had a vested interest in her now. Perhaps that was why he was looking so concerned.

Dranguille's palm slapped the polished surface of the veilwood table.

"This is intolerable! That the Inquisitor should be struck down in this facility by the hand of one of our own operatives…"

"The Enemy is subtle," said Livia softly.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Livia shrugged. "Just something they taught me in the scholum."

"Well I think we can do without your childhood platitudes, Sister. Believe me, there's nothing subtle about a knife in your back."

"Then you're missing the wider point," said Livia, calmly. "If you'll excuse the pun." Dranguille's eye narrowed, but she didn't interrupt. Livia glanced across at Smyre and, as if he had somehow picked up her unspoken desire for support, the adjutant finally moved across to the table and sat down at it, although, Livia noted with some amusement, at a point precisely between the two women sat at its opposite ends.

"What's been happening in the last few hours _is_subtle," insisted Livia. "Things have been happening so quickly, we've not had time to think about it – only react. It's only in the last hour or so that I've begun at least to identify the pieces of our particular puzzle." She stared at Dranguille, intently. The other woman was beginning to calm down and she was glad of that. She needed her insight. She needed her detachment. Not for the first time, she wondered if there had been anything going on between the Interrogator and Brecht. She pushed that thought aside and took a deep breath.

"Let's start with this morning. We don't know what happened at the Querin residence," the Sister continued, "because the only two surviving witnesses are currently comatose in the sickbay of this facility. Coincidence? Unlikely. So, the decisions we need to make in the next few hours are necessarily affected by our ignorance of a number of key issues. Firstly, what caused the destruction on the top floor of the under-governor's mansion? None of our personnel were carrying explosives or heavy munitions. The Inquisitor is a powerful psyker, but even he would have needed some kind of accelerant to cause the kind of devastation we're talking about here. So, what was it?" She pushed the first of her documents across the table towards the Interrogator, who took it wordlessly, scanning the information inscribed on the dataslate quickly.

"Psycho-sensitive response charts for the time of the explosion?"

Livia nodded. "The last sheet is taken from the astropathic centre in Secundus Fortis. The response was strong – and unusual – enough to be recorded in the duty log and appended to the official daily Imperial transmission."

"So I noticed. 'Astropath van Oosterhuisen bled from his left ear and uttered the phrase "the walls bleed night" seventy-three times, before the sedative took effect.'" Dranguille looked up. "And what conclusions do you draw, Sister?"

"The explosion was psychic in origin. One or more of the Querin household were powerful psykers."

It was Dranguille's turn to sigh. "Yes, well, the daughter had psychic potential. There was no doubt about that. It's possible that her ability was inherited."

Livia frowned. "I was working on the assumption that the Querins had a psyker in their employ. Are you saying…?"

The Interrogator held her hands up and her eye glittered with grim humour. "Alright, I suppose it's time I told you what I know about all this." She glanced across at Smyre. "The Adjutant already knows most of it."

Smyre inclined his head, slowly, not quite meeting Livia's inquiring glance.

Dranguille leant forward, clasping her hands together and resting them on the table. "We knew all along that the cultists were at best a distraction, at worst a front for something more dangerous. You don't call yourself 'The Cult of the True-Seers' and advertise yourself with all-night parties in the WireWild, if you're being serious about worshipping the dark powers. And the compound on the edge of town was a joke. Why do you think we used the PDF and not our own company of stormtroopers? The local commander was virtually begging Janner to let them play a part." Dranguille's face hardened. "No. We knew there was something else going on. We just didn't know for sure who was involved. Marchmont had dropped hints about the cult being controlled by a more exclusive 'inner circle' and that the cult within a cult was composed of members of Brachius' elite. Brecht believed him."

"Why didn't Brecht just take the information from him? With his psychic ability, it would have been child's play to do."

Dranguille looked at Livia sharply. "You really don't know Brecht very well at all, do you? Taking the information directly from Marchmont's mind would have compromised a number of other delicate operations. Brecht wasn't prepared to do that." The Interrogator sighed. "It's all a moot point now, anyway. Marchmont's dead."

"And his lover is enjoying our hospitality in cell 34-A?"

"Quite." Dranguille rose. "So I should be on my way, really. It's time to find out exactly what she knows." Dranguille began to move away from the table, but Livia's voice stopped her in her tracks.

"Wait a moment." Livia glanced across at Smyre, who, she was pleased to see, looked more relaxed than he had been at the start of the meeting. "Firstly, you're not going anywhere near that cell without me." Dranguille stiffened and raised her eyebrow questioningly. Livia ignored her. "Secondly, we have a more urgent matter to discuss. How was Vollex corrupted? How did his body transform? How did his dead brain matter turn into strip upon strip of paper?"

Dranguille sat down heavily. "Ah," she said, softly. "The book."

"Yes." Livia leaned forward, her eyes gleaming intently. "The book."


	26. Chapter 5b

The ground beneath his frantic feet was becoming dirtier, more treacherous. He had lost track of time and the landscape around him had become a blur of white and brown, the glare of the sun dazzling his eyes when his head jerked back to glance up at the sky. There was no destination to his headlong flight; only the heart-hammering terror of the unknown creature behind him drove him on. He had yielded utterly to the overwhelming, tyrannical impulse of the hunted – the ironbound compulsion to get away.

Another howl, much closer now, reverberated in his ears and, underneath it, a hard, heavy rhythmic breathing, faint but growing in volume, carried across the wasteland towards him. He shot a desperate glance over his shoulder and felt a fear far colder than the surrounding air sluice through his veins.

He could see the creature clearly now. It was a quadruped, sleek and black. His mind was having difficulty in conceiving of it as a whole, insisting on focusing on the most vivid details of its physical form over and over again: the shifting of powerful muscles beneath sable skin; eyes glowing like dying embers in a squat, ugly head; teeth sprouting upwards from an immense lower jaw; claws churning up the snow and dirt.

He ran on. And screamed.

The ground plunged away beneath him and he felt himself falling, tumbling, rolling. Pain scraped at his shoulder, his hip, his thigh, as he slithered down a dirty slope and, with a soft wet sucking sound, fell into a foul-smelling pool of freezing mud.

He wallowed for a moment, trying to spread his arms to keep himself afloat, spitting out a gobbet of mud, glancing up at the top of the small hill he had just fallen down. The mud had a slightly rotten taste to it, as if something had fallen into it and died many months ago. He tried to push the thought away, but its implications lingered darkly in his mind. He had to get out of here. Desperately, he looked around for something with which he could lever himself out of the thick, cloying substance, but dirt and rocks were all he could see.

Something moved at the periphery of his vision; he found his gaze drawn upwards and fear blossomed within him again. There was a squat shape silhouetted at the top of the rise. A sleek, four-legged shape with a flat, brutal head that sniffed the air and looked down towards the mud pool.

Instinctively, he backed away, but succeeded only in losing his balance and splashing backwards with an almost comical plopping sound. His head went under and he almost panicked, fighting back his body's instinctive desire to inhale just at the last moment. The mud was clammy and cold against his face as he broke the surface. His fingers were numb with the cold and they scraped away the dirt on his face with awkward, clumsy movements.

Breathing, slow and stentorian, reached his ears, even as he steadied himself, his eyes beginning to focus on the dark angular shape waiting patiently near the mud pool's edge.

"You'll have to kill it."

The voice came from behind him and he turned to see who it was, ensuring that his slow, careful movements did not overtopple him again. He was dimly aware of a large bulky shape on the very edge of his vision, but his attention was arrested by the glint of metal on the pool's farther shore. A dagger, its hilt embossed with a curious double eagle motif, stuck out from the hard packed earth, quivering slightly.

Nervously, he shot a glance at the black beast behind him. It hadn't moved. It stood, waiting, regarding him with black, glittering eyes, its breath gathering in clouds around its slobbering mouth. His glance became a stare, as he took in its broad shoulders and powerful haunches. It seemed content to watch him, though. He supposed it understood that he had nowhere to go.

Eyes fixed firmly on it, he backed away slowly, his feet just brushing the bottom of the pool – not enough to stand squarely on, but just enough to give himself a means of propelling his body backwards. Towards the knife.

He felt a surge of relief as his numb feet scraped against a raised shelf at the bottom of the pool. It was considerably shallower at this end now. The beast watched his body rise from the pool, cocking its head quizzically. Heart pounding like an ancient and rickety engine in his chest, he turned and grabbed hold of the dagger.

And the creature pounced.

He caught a blur of movement in the corner of his eye and tried to turn, tugging the dagger free as he did so. But it was already too late. The creature landed on his exposed back, claws slashing his skin, dragging him down into the freezing mud once more.

Pain lanced along his shoulders and adrenalin burned through his veins. The creature's breath was loud in his ears for a moment and then the weight of its body sent him plunging to the bottom of the pool. Frantically, he tried to shake himself free, but the creature had its claws dug deep into his flesh. Mud sloshed into his ears, his mouth, his nostrils. With the strength of desperation, he plunged the dagger backwards and felt something give against its tip. The creature tore at the flesh on his back in its efforts to disentangle itself from him. There was a sudden release of pressure and he pushed himself up again, his head breaking the surface of the pool.

A growl reverberated in the chill air just behind him. The creature slashed at him with its forepaw, even as its other limbs worked to keep itself afloat. It raked his cheek, but, although his face stung, he quickly realised it had been a superficial blow. He shook his head rapidly to clear the mud from his eyes.

The creature powered forward, trying to close with him, but its movements were slow and cumbersome in the cloying mud. But then, of course, so were his. He tried to dive away from it, but its claws found his chest and its fang-filled mouth loomed large in his vision. More agony burst open in his body. He saw, as if from a distance, the creature rear its head back for the killing bite. The terror of approaching death energised the muscles in his arm and he brought the dagger up out of the clinging mud, plunging it into the creature's neck. Hot blood flew from the wound and the sensation of it falling on his skin was almost pleasurable. He watched the light die in the creature's eyes and its massive body begin to sink beneath the mud's surface. He watched it for a moment, his body shaking – and not just with the cold.

A wet, wheezing, bubbling sound broke his reverie. It took him a moment to realise that he was hearing laughter.

"Oh, well done. Well done."

Wearily, he dragged the weight of his body around in the mud and made his way towards the shallower end of the pool. The shape he had glimpsed earlier was waiting for him. He gazed at it thoughtfully. It was a man, seated in an ornately carved chair, gold leaf glittering in the weak sunlight. The chair was floating approximately half a meter off the ground. There was no visible means of keeping it suspended in the air like that, although, as he got nearer, he could see a faint shimmering in the space between the bottom of the chair and the mud-spattered snow.

The man who sat in the chair, the man who had, he supposed, given him the dagger, was an ugly, bloated thing. His face was gnarled and twisted with age, the fat lips of the mouth crusted over with boils and suppurating sores. A shock of white hair sprouted from the leprous skin of his scalp and his nose was fat and bulbous. The man clasped his hands in front of his corpulent frame and succeeded in conveying a sense of both smugness and menace in more or less equal measure. Beneath him, his legs were truncated stumps, withered and useless.

The wet bubbling laughter sounded again.

Something tugged at his mind insistently, like a small child anxious to be on his way.

"Do I know you?" he wondered.

The fat thing in the chair wheezed asthmatically. "I should hope so, Mister Brecht."

The uttering of that name – of that single syllable – on the freezing air had a profound effect on the man in the mud pool. It was an unveiling, an unlocking. Things that had lingered at the edge of his memory suddenly strode fully into view: the image of a spaceship, a massive, buttressed slab of gothic architecture, cobalt light blazing at its rear, powering through the void; a woman's face, gentle, kind, smiling beatifically as the bullets slammed into her arms and chest; an eldar farseer, slanted almond-shaped eyes widening in terror, torn apart by a madman's psychokinetic fury; a kneeling Sister of Battle, sweat pouring from her face, pure light spilling like tears from her unseeing eyes, the smell of lavender and roses mingling in the seething air.

Brecht stared at the man in the chair, a strange mixture of disbelief, relief and contempt mingling on his features. He knew who he was and now he knew who sat smugly before him. This was the man who had first groomed him for the Inquisition; this was the man who had supervised his first missions as an Interrogator; this was his sponsor, his mentor. This was the man to whom he owed everything he had become.

"Gnostos, you old fraud!" he spat. "You mad, fat, flatulent piece of filth! What the hell's going on?"

* * *

Smyre had been watching the two women carefully, surreptitiously. He'd read their files; he knew everything about them. Dranguille was the elder by two years and seven months; her family were of a higher class than Livia's; her combat skills were considerably more impressive. Still, the more he saw of the Sister, the more he was convinced he had made the right decision.

Livia was cool and detached, but, above all, she was inquisitive. Much of this was an act, he knew. The calmness only went so deep and he had glimpsed its fragility in the corridor outside Brecht's quarters. In that sense, the Sister Hospitaller was playing a role, but, by the Emperor, she was playing it bloody well.

And the inquisitiveness, the gnawing relentless desire to know – that wasn't an act. That was as much an integral part of her as her medical skill or that damnable fringe she was always fiddling with. She'd decided to visit Brecht and then Heirati. She wanted to know what was going on. That desire was etched on every line of her face. It was there in the way she leaned forward now, eager, determined.

"Yes. The book."

Dranguille shrank back a little into her seat and then, predictably enough he supposed, turned to him.

"Adjutant?"

He had been expecting this. Well, Livia needed to know, didn't she? He cleared his throat self-consciously. Where to begin?

"Sister, you may not be aware of this, but among my duties as adjutant of this facility is the collection of information of an… esoteric nature. Such information is unorthodox in its provenance and is generally sensitive, sometimes even morally suspect. I am not exaggerating when I say that the information that has crossed my desk in the last few years would make the positions of a number of planetary governors and, in one or two cases, sub-sector lords utterly untenable. Needless to say, such information is closely guarded. It is a mark of my personal faith in you that I am willing to divulge what I know in this instance."

Livia stared at him, but remained quiet. Smyre was grateful. She needed to know this; she needed to understand.

"Such information comes to me from a variety of sources, some within the Inquisitorial Conclave of Argemnos itself, others from both military and civilian Imperial bodies. Still others come from less legitimate sources: rogue traders, smugglers, aliens." He paused, weighing Livia's reaction carefully. The Sister's face was a mask of neutrality. Well, that would have to do. "The information is logged and stored when I receive it. It is investigated at the Inquisitor's discretion. And this is what I need you to understand. Brecht acts on perhaps a tenth of the information I pass on to him. Despite what you may have heard, Brecht is not a radical, nor is he a glory-seeker. He is quite prepared to let certain governments, no matter how corrupt they may be, continue, because he recognises the importance of stability in guarding against the real Enemy. Violence, confusion, hatred, strife: these are meat and drink to those we are sworn to fight. Better political corruption than moral turmoil."

Livia took a moment to digest this. Again, Smyre waited for a reaction. He was mildly surprised when there wasn't one.

"Go on," said Livia, tersely.

"Several months ago, it came to my attention that a market in forbidden texts had opened up here on Phrysia Secundus. Although this happens from time to time, even on the most stable of worlds, this did, I must confess, surprise me. Our presence here is an ill-kept secret among Secundus' elite. It would be a brave man indeed to risk drawing attention to himself here." Smyre allowed himself a small, sad smile. "Or a very stupid one. Unfortunately, there is no limit to the human capacity for stupidity." He shrugged. "In any event, it became clear that this particular buyer was both wealthy and powerful. The nature of the purchases being made suggested the former, while the fact that the transactions were generally untraceable suggested the latter. Whoever the buyer was, he had contacts in the Adeptus Ministorum who were able to 'lose' transport and custom certificates. Put simply, we had very little to go on and, at the time, Brecht simply couldn't devote his full attention to rooting the buyer out. As you may recall, this was at the time of the Gantian Uprising. Most of the staff of this facility were offworld, yourself included."

Livia gave Smyre a sour look. "Yes. I remember." She smoothed back her fringe. "So this mystery buyer of yours somehow obtained the book?"

Smyre glanced across at Dranguille who met his gaze wordlessly. He turned back to Livia.

"Well, yes." He licked his lips. "Actually, we sold it to him."

* * *

A violent shudder wracked Brecht's body, as he felt the corpse of the beast brush lazily against his leg in the foul, sucking mud.

The figure in the floating chair chuckled softly. He offered no reaction to Brecht's earlier outburst. With gleaming, avaricious eyes, he observed Brecht's efforts to extricate himself from the thick, cloying mud.

Fighting back an almost overwhelming sense of tiredness, Brecht made the muscles of his arm and hand plunge the dagger into the hard earth that surrounded the mud pool. The tip of the blade sank perhaps a centimetre into the ground. It would have to do.

Slowly, painfully, trying to ignore the wetness on his face and the slowly spreading pain in his shoulder and side, he dragged his body out of the mud. When the dagger came free of the frozen earth and he felt himself sliding back into the bone-chilling pit, he scrabble frantically with both the dagger and his free hand, straining every muscle in a prodigious effort to haul himself clear.

He lay on the cold, hard ground, panting. A wet, bubbling sound drifted towards him on the cold air. Laughter again.

"Oh, very good."

Grunting with the effort, he rolled himself onto his back, too exhausted to wince at the twitching pain in his shoulder. He stared up at the steel-grey sky for a moment, watching the glacial movement of a massive cloud bank across his field of vision.

"Go away," he muttered.

"I don't think so."

Propping himself up on one elbow, Brecht glared at the figure in the chair.

"What are you doing here, Gnostos?" He glanced around him, taking in the mud-packed snow, the bleak, flat grey landscape. His breath fled from his body in strips of vapour. "For that matter, what am I doing here?"

More wheezing laughter, short and high-pitched, almost girlish. It reminded him of two small rodents rutting.

"Where is here?"

"So many questions," Gnostos said, leering playfully. "And all of them the wrong one to ask."

Brecht bit his lip thoughtfully. He glanced down at his body and grimaced. It was coated in uneven clumps of slimy mud. Here and there, patches of dirty skin gleamed weakly through the brown. His feet were very cold; he could barely feel his toes.

He sighed, once more watching his breath swirl away on the icy breeze.

"You do know I hate you, don't you?"

"You have made that position clear to me on a number of occasions, Aloysius. I must confess…"

"In fact, 'hate' is too mild a word. 'Detest' might be better. Or 'loathe', perhaps."

Gnostos scowled. He never had liked being interrupted. "I must confess I don't really understand where your antipathy comes from. I suppose it's something all fathers and sons go through, isn't it?"

"You're not my father." Brecht's stare had hardened. He sat up slowly, drawing his knees up under his chin.

"I'm as good as. The best you're going to get in this lifetime."

"Please don't start this again." Brecht's tone became mocking. "Oh, thank you, Lord Inquisitor. Thank you for rescuing me from the processing facility. Thank you for treating me like chattel for ten years. Thank you for promoting me to the rank of dogsbody." He fell silent. The bitterness in his voice was something to which he was unaccustomed. It was ugly, disturbing.

"Such ingratitude." Gnostos leaned nearer, the chair hovering close enough that Brecht could smell the faint ozone tang of its suspension system. "And you still haven't asked the right question."

Brecht held Gnostos' gaze, but there was nothing to read in the yellowish-white of his eyes or the unfathomable vermilion-edged darkness of his pupils.

"Why am I here?" he said quietly.

"Very good."

Once more, he looked at the lifeless landscape, the smears of brown on the pure white snow. The stink of the mud, even now hardening on his body, filled his nostrils. It was sour-sweet and heavy, the scent of over-ripe decay and ancient earth. The cold gnawing sensation that had scratched at his gut ever since he had arrived here now plunged its claws into his vitals. He licked his lips uncertainly.

"Am I… dead?"

Gnostos smiled coldly. "Do you feel dead?"

Brecht stared at him. "Not having enjoyed that happy state before, how would I know?"

The smile disappeared. "No. You're not dead."

"Dying, then."

"Probably."

Brecht let out a long, shuddering breath. "It's so cold."

"Yes."

"So… all of this… you… that creature that attacked me… it's not real?"

Gnostos snorted, if anything a more disturbing sound than the laughter. "My boy, you're an Inquisitor. Trifling concerns such as what is – and is not – real are beneath you." Gnostos chuckled again, spittle gathering, greyish-white, at the corners of his mouth. "Did the creature's claws feel real? Was the fear coursing through your veins real? You of all people should know that just because you can't experience something with your physical senses doesn't mean it's an illusion."

"This is my mind."

"Oh, yes."

Painfully, Brecht dragged himself to his feet. A wave of exhaustion crashed against him and he almost lost his footing and fell. Concentrating hard, he stood upright. He glanced around him. It could have been his imagination, but he had the distinct impression that the landscape was changing, closing in. Were those mountains on the far horizon?

He returned his attention to the fat, crippled figure in the suspension chair. Gnostos – or at least his mind's representation of him. Hideous, corpulent, grotesque Gnostos. The man who had, to all intents and purposes, made him an Inquisitor.

"So what is this? 'Brecht's Greatest Hits'? A magical mystery tour through an Inquisitor's psyche?"

"I'll ask you again, Aloysius. Did the creature's claws feel real? You know they did. This is no passive pict-cast you're in. This is a fight."

"For survival?"

"Nothing so mundane." Gnostos shifted slightly in his chair and a pungent odour mingled with the faintly sulphuric scent of the freezing air. The Lord Inquisitor shrugged. "No. This is a fight for knowledge." He reached to the side of his chair and opened up a large compartment hidden within it. From this, he retrieved a dark package. He tossed it onto the ground in front of Brecht. "A gift. Something to aid you in the coming struggle."

Brecht bent down to pick it up. It was a lump of black leather, thick and stiff in his grip. He shook it out and it became a greatcoat, a stylised 'I' with three bars across it embossed on its broad lapels.

"How obviously symbolic," he muttered, even as he shrugged it on.

Gnostos looked at him sternly. "It's what you are, Aloysius. No matter how much you may wish to deny it."

Holding his arms out to display the greatcoat, Brecht fixed Gnostos with a withering glare. "Do I look like I'm denying it, old man?"

"You are what I made you."

"Now that I will deny." Brecht slipped the dagger into his pocket. "I'm more than that. I always will be."

Gnostos smirked. "We'll see." He looked up at a sky suddenly grown black. A handful of tiny stars winked feebly in the darkness; a full moon gleamed dully, casting dirty white light onto the ground. "Time is running out. You must get moving."

"Hold on! What sort of knowledge am I meant to be searching for? How do I get out of this… place?"

Brecht whirled round. In the blink of an eye, the landscape had changed utterly. All around him, large blocky buildings, their ornamentation and architectural style placing them as Imperial in origin, reared upwards and he found himself lost in their shadows. From somewhere to his left the dull rumble of distant gunfire drifted towards him.

Picking his way carefully through the rubble-strewn street, he examined his surroundings, allowing his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. The street was empty of life. There was no sign of Gnostos, no sign of anyone. Apart from the buildings, the only indication that the street had once been occupied was the blasted ruin of an antique groundcar, its front grille twisted and its windscreen cracked. Whatever had inflicted the damage had long since moved on. Street lamps speared upwards into the gloom, but, deprived of power, they looked like gibbets waiting to bear the condemned.

For some reason, that thought brought a painful flash of memory – of blackened bodies swaying in ash-thick air, of things that had once been human baying and screaming, carving twisted runes into their flesh with weapons made from human bone.

He shook his head to clear it and looked up at the night sky. He felt a thrill of recognition course through him. That constellation of stars to the left of the glowering moon – that was the Angel of Fire, wasn't it? But that meant…

Brecht's pace quickened, as did his pulse. Head bowed, he passed the gaping doorways of a vast Adeptus Administratum building without so much as looking at them. If his identification of the night sky had been correct, then this planet was Carnus Majestus and, if that was the case, there was no time to lose.

He had lived through the catastrophe on Carnus once before. He had no desire to do so again.

Ignoring the scraping of the hard tarmac against the soles of his feet, Brecht broke into a run, his long, loping stride eating up the ground, the memory of his most bitter failure snapping hungrily at his heels.


	27. Chapter 5c

Livia's brown eyes widened.

"You did what?"

Smyre's mouth tightened a little and it seemed to her that his eyes gleamed with a hint of disappointment. This only fuelled her anger. In all honesty, she couldn't give a stinkrat's arse what Smyre thought of her. The revelation that the source of Vollex's infection had passed through this very facility was simply too much for her to take demurely.

"You must understand-"

"Well, you're right there! Spot on! What I'm struggling – desperately – to understand here, Smyre, is why the Inquisitor would let such a ridiculously dangerous object pass to someone he didn't even know!"

Smyre sighed. "That is precisely what I'm attempting to clarify."

Her face forming a decidedly rigid grin, Livia slapped the table in front of her. "This I've got to hear."

"Perhaps," murmured Dranguille, "if the Sister isn't up to this level of debriefing, she should return to her medical duties. I'm sure there'll be some catheters that need changing or something equally as urgent."

Cheeks reddening, Livia glared at the Interrogator. Smyre frowned. "That's not helping, Vivienne," he said.

But Dranguille was just warming up. She leaned forward, the merest hint of a supercilious smile flitting across her face. "I mean, it's not as if she doesn't have patients to attend to, is it? No shortage of candidates there." Her thin tongue snaked out to wet her bottom lip. "Or perhaps the Sister is contemplating a transfer to the Officio Assassinorum after her heroics in the quarantine ward…"

"Vivienne!" Smyre's voice was one part outrage, two parts exasperation.

Livia jerked backward involuntarily at the Interrogator's words, as if she had been physically slapped. Locking her gaze with Dranguille's, she gripped the edge of the table. Hard.

"That," she said, fiercely, "is precisely my point. If lower ranking members of staff had known about the book, about Brecht's plans for it, then there'd have been no need for heroics." That last word had been spat out, like a particularly unpleasant lump of gristle.

Dranguille regarded Livia for a moment. Smyre watched the two women carefully. Both so proud; both unwilling to give ground. The raw skin of Dranguille's face glistened in the light from the suspended lumen globes. Livia's jaw jutted forward defiantly. Both of them were magnificent in their own way. Now if he could only get through this without them trying to kill each other. He resisted the urge to breathe a sigh of relief when, finally, Dranguille sat back in her chair and waved an airy hand in his direction.

"Tell her, Adjutant," she said. "For the love of the Emperor, tell her before we all get swept along in a tide of self-righteous indignation."

Smyre drew a deep breath as Livia turned to him far more attentively than she had just a few moments ago.

"The book was not considered dangerous. Curious, yes. Forbidden, certainly. But in all the months that Brecht possessed it, it had not displayed anything like the… activity it has shown in recent hours."

"Then why would Querin want it?" asked Livia.

"It has unusual – some would say 'unique' – properties." Smyre smiled, sadly. "Brecht was convinced it originated from pre-Imperial times, but I've always had difficulty believing that. What is certain is that, although the binding is some kind of skin – perhaps human; it's difficult to be sure – it is the pages within that are the real treasure." His face became more animated, as he warmed to his theme. "If you were to take the book from its secure storage and open it yourself, you would see nothing. Just blank page after blank page. Not a trace of ink or writing of any kind. A tabula rasa."

Livia frowned. "I don't understand."

"The paper is psychoreactive," Smyre said, quietly. "No, that's not strictly accurate. The paper is sensitive to certain emanations that are psychic in nature. Brecht believed – believes – that, with the right amount of psychic manipulation, the book could become…" His voice trailed off, uncertainly.

Dranguille completed his sentence.

"A window to the Warp."

* * *

There was a stitch in his side. Panting, Brecht pulled up and bent over to try and ease the discomfort. He took the chance to get his bearings. The problem was that so much of Imperial architecture looked so very alike.

Carnus Majestus had been a technologically advanced world, its chief export genetically enhanced cereals, the basis of a bewildering array of Imperial foodstuffs. That, and men. The Carnus divisions had fought in a number of conflicts. Members of the XVII Majestus Light Infantrymen had been awarded the Silver Eagle for outstanding valour in a war against the orks in the Lokar sub-sectors. It was a proud world, an important world. Worlds like Carnus Majestus didn't just turn.

Brecht glanced at the silent buildings, towering over him, saw shapes stirring behind dirty glass high above. The damage was more pronounced here. He had cut his feet on broken glass on more than one occasion. Some of the buildings' walls sported impact craters. A block and a half away, he had passed the smoking ruin of a PDF Chimera. There had been no sign of its crew. Its cupola had been dented; the short, vicious snout of a pintle-mounted heavy stubber had pointed despairingly at the black sky. Around the vehicle's smashed chassis, spent shell casings had glittered like silver coins.

There had been no sign of its crew.

Brecht scrutinised the nearby buildings carefully. The near one, all granite blocks and chipped marble statuary – that was the Department of Labour Assignment, wasn't it? Brecht peered into the gloom. It was difficult to be sure.

Somewhere behind him, a door slammed shut.

Not bothering to turn around, Brecht thrust his hands into his pockets. He didn't have far to go, he told himself. He was almost there.

* * *

Livia digested this.

"What exactly does that mean?"

Smyre glanced at Dranguille, who smiled sardonically. "When it comes to the Warp," she said, "there is no 'exactly'. What we have are educated guesses."

Nodding slowly, Smyre turned back to Livia. "Brecht believes that, with the right prompting, the book could eventually be used to glean intelligence from the Warp itself, perhaps even predict certain Chaotic incursions before they manifest in our reality." He shrugged. "At least, that was his hope. To the best of my knowledge, the book remained inert, though."

"To the best of your knowledge."

"Well, I…"

"No," said Dranguille, sharply. "She's right. Brecht kept secrets. We all know that. How far he'd got with the book could definitely be one of them." She leaned forward. "The plan to sell the book to the mystery buyer worked. We used Marchmont to oversee the sale."

"How would Brecht know who'd bought it? With Marchmont unwilling to divulge his client's identity, selling the book was a huge risk, surely?"

Smyre looked uncertainly at Dranguille. "Brecht said he had a way of tracking it, that he'd know if anyone tried to use it." He smiled, weakly. "He didn't tell me how. And, no, I didn't ask."

Livia pursed her lips, eyes distant for a moment. "But that still doesn't explain what happened to Vollex. Maybe there was something about the book Brecht didn't know. What if," she said slowly, "the book isn't a 'window'?" Her eyes snapped up. "What if it's a door?"

* * *

Brecht arrived in the main square almost bent double, the stitch in his side having made a less than surprising reappearance a few moments ago. But, the pain was bearable. At least he could see his destination.

The Cathedral of Saint Alberic the Vengeful squatted on the far side of the square, like an irascible uncle at a family Ascension Day feast. In comparison to some of the ornately adorned administrative buildings nearby, its broad façade, constructed from local sandstone rigorously painted a sombre dark grey, was perhaps the most unappealing frontage to a place of worship Brecht had ever seen. The front entrance way was made of wrought iron, its simple bars more appropriate to a prison than a church. Its walls bristled with spiked crenellations and fierce gargoyles guarded the domed roof with snarling faces and weathered teeth. As Brecht began his long walk across the square, he found himself wondering. Had the architects known what they were doing when they built this place? Had they been told?

Smiling ruefully, he dismissed the idea. Things were never that simple in his experience. He thrust his hands in his pockets and kept his head down. The pain in his side still flared up from time to time, but that was the least of his worries. As he reached the cathedral steps, he tried to stop himself thinking about what had happened on this world. And failed miserably. It was no use. There were some things that even an Inquisitor couldn't – shouldn't – forget. If he could reach the lower crypts in time, perhaps there was a chance…

"Stop right there!"

Brecht glanced up and sighed. Of course there were guards. They'd been stationed in the shadows pooling around the entranceway. Two of them. And they looked spooked. He couldn't say he blamed them.

Nodding curtly to them, he continued up the cathedral steps, mustering as much sense of purpose as he could.

"Good evening, gentlemen. If you'd be so kind as to open up the gate for me, I have some urgent business with the prelate."

The harsh whine of a lasrifle being primed stopped him in his tracks.

One of the guards stepped forward. Although his tone was casual, there was a watchfulness in his eyes that Brecht knew was dangerous.

"Then you're out of luck, my friend. The prelate's off-world. Of course, if you were really here to see him, you'd already know that." He brought the rifle to his shoulder, staring down the barrel. "Hands up where I can see them!"

Brecht raised his hands slowly, watching as the guard stepped towards him, his comrade hanging back a pace or two.

"It's very important that you let me into this building," Brecht began, keeping his tone reasonable and relaxed.

"Shut up!"

Brecht licked his lips and stared up at the soldier. The man was too far away for him to see the insignia on his tunic, but, by his high puttees, pale green helmet and light-coloured camouflage fatigues, he guessed that he was a member of a Carnus regiment. He took a tentative step forward.

"Don't move again!"

The guard's comrade had joined him now, but his rifle was still slung low. He observed Brecht with shrewd, quick eyes, but seemed content to let his more aggressive colleague take the lead.

Brecht caught the gaze of the quieter one. "Local lads, are you?" he said, softly. "Wondering what the hell's happening to your world?"

"I said shut up!"

Dammit, he didn't have time for this. And it had been a long time since anyone so insignificant had spoken to him like this. A dangerous anger flashed in Brecht's gut and he lowered his hands sharply, turning to the guard who had spoken.

"If you're going to shoot me, then bloody well get on with it! Can't you see I'm just trying to help?"

The guard looked as if he might just take Brecht up on his offer, but his comrade intervened.

"Let him speak, Dix. Sounds like he might just know what's going on…"

Something in the quieter guard's voice chilled Brecht's blood; it had unlocked a section of his memory. Something about that night. This night.

There was so much to remember. So much he'd tried desperately to forget. Sections of the city had risen up against their Imperial rulers. PDF forces still loyal to the Imperium had tried their best to contain the rebels, but had lost control of vast swathes of the megalopolis by the time an Imperial Guard taskforce had been dispatched. Brecht could remember the initial reports, could still feel the sense of dismay as he realised just how much of a foothold the Enemy had gained on this world. That would have been weeks ago, though. By now, the rebel force had been driven out of the city and was staging a last desperate defense on the gently rolling farmland to the east. This was the endgame. This was the night the Imperium lost a world.

And it had happened here.

He stared at the two soldiers, a strange urgency racing through his veins.

"You've lost vox contact, haven't you?" he asked. "On all channels. There are seven entrances to this building and there are two soldiers on guard at each one. There are a further twenty inside, stationed at various points, including the lower crypts." He took a step forward. And another. "You've not been able to contact them for – what? – the last ten minutes? Twenty?"

"Stay where you are!"

Brecht could see the thin sheen of sweat on the guardsman's face. He could almost taste his fear.

The other man looked at Brecht, confused.

"Who are you? Why are you here?"

Brecht turned to him. "My name is Brecht and I'm here to save your life."

Dix snorted. "Yeah, right."

"Please… listen to me." Brecht took another step. He was close enough to see the insignia flash on Dix's arm. The Carnus XXth. Shock troopers. Tough as nails. Had they been requested specifically for this posting? Had _he _requested them? "This cathedral is important to the enemy. That's why you've been guarding it. While your comrades have been fighting – and dying – out on the Mellajar Plains, you've been guarding this-" he nodded up at the imposing building whose shadow fell across them like a smothering cloak "-empty building." He licked his lips. "Except it's not empty. Not really. It's never been empty. Not in all the time it's stood here. What, fifteen hundred, sixteen hundred years? All that time, it's been home to a secret." He glanced across at the barred gateway. "All this time…"

"He's talking crap," Dix snarled.

"Am I? Then, why haven't you voxed me in to your superior officer? Why haven't you heard from the others inside the building?" He was close enough to touch the muzzle of Dix's gun. Gently, he placed his fingertip on it and pushed it slowly – ever so slowly – to the side. He stared at Dix, read the fear in his eyes. "Secrets, guardsman. The Imperium is riddled with them and the one in there is about to come into the light. You see, at some point in this world's history – and we don't know precisely when – this world was… seeded."

"Seeded? What do you mean?" This was Dix's companion. He was younger than the other soldier, Brecht realised. Younger, but less frightened. Interesting.

"By Chaos," said Brecht, simply. "Your ancestors recognised it for what it was. They isolated it, contained it, sanctified the ground with the remains of righteous saints, built places of worship upon it." He paused, glancing over at the building, looming massively against the night sky. "There's something buried under this cathedral. Something old. Very old." He laughed bitterly. "And, true to form, the Inquisition has known about it for millennia and they've set you to guard it in the vain hope that, somehow, the secret will stay buried and everything will…" He broke off, sniffing the air. "Can you smell roses?"


	28. Chapter 5d

Dranguille nodded slowly. "The book's become a conduit." She smiled sourly. "A secret passage to the Warp."

Smyre glanced first at Dranguille and then at Livia. "And the change to Vollex's body?"

"I think," said Livia, slowly, "that the transformation of his body will have been a secondary effect of exposure to the book. Something happened to his mind first." She let out a long breath. "Believe me, he wasn't being coerced when he attacked Brecht. He was very eager about it."

Dranguille sat back, her eyes growing distant. "Vollex, Querin, the cult, the book – all pieces of the same puzzle."

"And Brecht," pointed out Livia. "At the moment, he's the biggest puzzle of all."

Dranguille muttered something under her breath. Livia couldn't be sure, but she thought it sounded like 'welcome to my world'.

"Let's see if we can shed some light on at least some of the pieces, then," said Livia. "We've got LaFayette and we've got the book."

Nodding, Dranguille stood up. "I'll interview LaFayette, but I thought you said the book was in storage."

"It is. Heirati's anxious to have a look at it."

The Interrogator smiled. "Oh, I'm sure he is."

"I'm going to let him."

Dranguille's smile vanished, quickly. "Unwise."

Livia stared up at her, defiantly. "I don't care. We're two Interrogators and an Inquisitor down. If Heirati can help us-"

"I doubt it." Dranguille was holding herself perfectly still and Livia found herself again wondering about the relationship between the Interrogator and Brecht. Why this opposition to having the book analysed? What had Brecht already told Dranguille? Livia opened her mouth to argue her point, when Dranguille suddenly relaxed, letting the tension drain away from her body and turning away to walk towards the door. "Oh, very well, but-"

"But what?"

Dranguille turned back to her, her expression grim. "Just tell Heirati to be careful with it, that's all." She turned back to the door, resting her hand against it.

"Hold on!" It was Livia's turn to stand. She shot a glance at Smyre, who answered it with a decidedly neutral one of his own. "I want to be present during the interrogation."

Dranguille raised her eyebrow. "Eager to mop up some blood, are we?"

"We're working together on this, Vivienne," said Livia, hoping that her use of the other woman's first name might go some way to mollifying her. "No more secrets."

Dranguille stared at her as if she'd just grown an extra head. After a moment, she gave a small, grudging nod and flung the door open with slightly more force than was necessary.

"Fine," she said. "But if – when – Brecht recovers, that particular deal is well and truly off." She didn't wait for the Sister to catch up with her as she strode imperiously from the room.

* * *

The two soldiers shared a quick glance.

"You're mad!" It was Dix who had spoken. Predictably. The soldier was staring at him, taking in the mud-spattered greatcoat. And the bare ankles and feet visible below it. The rifle barrel was rising again, but Brecht barely registered the movement. The scent of flowers was stronger now.

And with it came a torrent of memory.

He had scrutinised the tactical displays carefully, observing the slow drip of red icons representing rebel units leaving the city become a flood, a steady swelling blot of red, the edges of it winking, surging, reforming, as the Carnus XVth and the Derenar Hussars hounded the rabble's flanks. He remembered – oh, Emperor, how he remembered – the sense of triumph, of satisfaction. The city had been saved, its dark secret kept. The rebels and cultists had gathered on the Mellajar Plains, a tactically suicidal move. The combined might of three Imperial regiments and a small detachment of Leman Russ tanks awaited them. It would be a slaughter, a massacre, a tide of blood.

"Hands back up. Now!"

Dix's face was a snarling mask of fear and anger. They had listened to him, but they hadn't understood. They had heard his words, but they hadn't believed. Brecht raised his hands mechanically. He could make out individual scents now – lavender and cherry blossom, the heady smell of a sensual, idyllic summer that now existed only in the race memory of an industrialised, brutalised humanity, desperately clinging to its place among the stars. It was a scent that bypassed the logic centres of the brain and connected with human consciousness on an almost primal level. He inhaled deeply – he couldn't help it – until his body sang with the smell. Lavender, cherry blossom, honeysuckle.

And roses, of course. Always, the roses.

He was dimly aware of Dix's comrade inching forwards, prodding him with the barrel of his gun. There was a wariness in his eyes that, Brecht knew, made him in some ways more dangerous than his aggressive colleague. It didn't matter now.

He remembered.

The cultists and rebels – the dregs of Carnus society, for the most part – had congregated on the Mellajar Plains and the Imperial troops had surged forward, sensing an easy victory. Bedraggled and silent, the cultists had stood in the shadows of monolithic ruins – the only man-made features on the otherwise unremarkable land. These ruins were ancient wind-scoured stones, their outlines softened and smoothed by the slow caress of patient, gentle time. Imperial surveys had catalogued and measured them, concluding that they had been erected at some point during the Age of Strife, but their significance had long since been lost with the passing of the millennia. There were no burial chambers beneath them and no indication of why they had been built. They had been classified as a curiosity, but an irrelevant one.

The Imperial surveyors had been wrong.

"Now follow me. We're going to take you to see Captain N'Goh. He can decide what to do with you." Dix thumbed the vox bead at his throat, an automatic, but futile gesture.

Brecht barely noticed it. He wasn't looking at the soldiers; he was looking beyond them. There was something about the air behind them. At a point roughly equidistant between the soldiers and the cathedral entrance, it had become smoky, hazy, as if someone had just dropped a distorting lens over his eye. As he watched for a moment, he saw the air shimmer and ripple. He thought he heard a soft crackling, hissing sound. He swallowed slowly.

"It's happening," he said, his voice as hollow as his gaze. "It's happening again."

The reports had come in from commanders on the front line. Troops were meeting a fair amount of resistance, but nothing they couldn't handle. The advance was proceeding according to plan, the Leman Russ detachment making short work of the cultists' hastily erected barricades and the Carnus XVth, the proudest and most decorated of the planet's regiments, dispatching their enemy with a righteous fervour that hovered just the right side of barbarism. But then the reports had changed in tone. Officers who had been confident, bullish, became confused. Frightened.

"The stones are black."

That's what he remembered them saying. The stones were black. Black with blood. Cultist after cultist had thrown themselves at the ancient monoliths, bruising, cutting, slashing, smashing themselves against the cold unyielding stone. The earth around the stones became a stinking morass, a crimson slush through which the Imperial troops had to wade to reach their objective.

Suddenly, Brecht had experienced a moment of clarity that was both wonderful and terrifying. The rebels who had died in the initial Imperial advance had done so willingly, knowing that they were buying their fellow cultists time to complete some kind of ritual.

He remembered that, hard on the heels of that revelation, had come an altogether more unpleasant sensation. He had felt the sickening lurch of the Warp in turmoil, had seen in his mind's eye thick snaking lines of black, cancerous energy snap outwards from the plains and, crackling with malevolent intent, rush towards the city.

The lightly guarded, largely empty city. With the Cathedral of Saint Alberic the Vengeful at its heart.

"What are you talking about?"

It was all a matter of perspective, Brecht thought, bitterly. On the one hand, the huge stone blocks of the Cathedral were solid and real. They possessed mass and weight; they existed in three dimensions, occupying a set position in empirical space. The air around them was many times lighter, the molecules that composed it less dense. Brecht could quote scientific formulae dealing with pressure, density and mass. They, and countless other mathematical and scientific principles, were the reassuring litanies on which humanity's understanding of reality was based.

The air behind the soldiers was no longer rippling, but bulging. Brecht felt his mind shiver as it struggled to cope with the implications.

Because there was another perspective. What if all that substance – so solid, so real – was just a thin skin, stretched tight over another, more powerful reality for which the 'rules' of our universe were no more relevant than the complex organisational codes of an ant colony were to an angry or inquisitive boy? What if that deeper reality could, given the fulfilment of certain conditions that had nothing whatsoever to do with such concepts as distance, proximity or space, infect our reality, rewriting our precious long-held laws and superimposing its own insane mathematics rudely and arrogantly on our own? What would it look like, this new over-written reality? What would it be like, this world circumscribed by the laws of passion and anger, the theorems of hatred and lust, the geometry of fear?

Brecht knew he was about to find out. The air split and broke open like a seed pod. For a moment, it became utterly two-dimensional, perspective flattened in contrast to the coruscating, boiling energy revealed by the growing rent hanging in the air. A wave of scent, intolerably sweet and sickeningly cloying, crashed over him and he knew that the soldiers sensed it, too, for they turned round in shock, swinging their rifles round to bear against this new threat.

They were far too late. Something was already coming through. Quickly.

A thin, sinewy arm reached out from the still-widening rent in the air, slashing at Dix with a speed that made Brecht's stomach lurch. Brecht saw the trooper's head, drizzling a thin mist of blood, fly into the air. By the time it came down, the creature that had killed Dix had stepped through the portal and caught it in one large, long-clawed hand.

It stared at Brecht for a moment with sardonic contempt. Eyes burning with a sulphurous yellow light, the daemon was perhaps three metres tall, its black, glistening hide sparking with latent warp energy. Eight horns grew in an irregular pattern from its head, forming a crude crown that glistened with encrusted blood. Its limbs were long and angular, jointed in ways that stunned Brecht's mind with their fundamental refusal to obey the accepted laws of anatomy.

"Nononononono..."

Behind it, Dix's comrade was quaking in terror and, Brecht noted, losing control of both his voice and his bladder at more or less the same time. But the daemon had eyes only for Brecht. It glared at him, its thin slash of a mouth drawn upwards in a mocking smile. It held Dix's upturned head casually in its hand, as if it were a brandy goblet. Keeping its gaze fixed on Brecht, it brought the head up to its face, sniffing its bloody contents for a moment, before tipping it back and draining it in a series of foul, voracious gulps.

Brecht fought back a wave of revulsion. Fitfully, his Inquisitorial training attempted to reassert itself, but the knowledge that this was a place where he had fought the Enemy and, no matter how much he would later try and dress up his decision as 'necessary sacrifice', lost transfixed him utterly.

Beneath his Inquisitorial greatcoat, he was a naked, dirty, shivering man. He knew that now. And the creature standing before him knew it too.

It tossed Dix's head, now a shrivelled rotting thing, to one side and took a step towards him.

Dix's friend had recovered his composure enough to start firing. The lasbolts crackled on the daemon's hide but didn't seem to penetrate. From the corner of his eye, Brecht saw another tear forming in the air just behind the hapless soldier.

Fear crawled like a million blind insects on his skin. The coat was a dead weight upon his shoulders.

The daemon took another step, fixing him with eyes the colour of a weeping wound. Its breath stank of murder, as it opened its mouth.

"He… issss… coming."


	29. Chapter 5e

The corridors and passageways of the Hole were empty around Livia. Faded sheets of paper declaring the same message in a startling variety of ways lined her route to the cells and she found her stride breaking as she began to think about what she had taken for granted so many times before.

_"__To yield to the Will of the Emperor is the duty of every man."_

Conform.

_"__Only in obedience shall you find peace."_

Conform.

_"__Worship the Emperor with all your body and all your mind."_

Conform.

And she _was_a dutiful servant. Of course, she was. She had served the Emperor uncompromisingly - occasionally acerbically - but always faithfully. The day when she had first stepped out of the safe, ordered world of her medical training and into the service of the Inquisition had been one of the proudest - and most frightening - of her life, but…

But.

There shouldn't be a 'but', she reminded herself. There should be unquestioning obedience. The Imperium's continued existence was guaranteed by a series of trade-offs, she knew. Protection and a shared purpose set against the loss of certain freedoms that earlier, more naïve generations of humanity had deemed sacrosanct. Inalienable. The freedom to have an opinion. The freedom to express that opinion. The freedom to dissent. The freedom to think. She had always accepted that trade-off without question. She had given her energy, her mind, her spirit to the Imperium without any doubt and without any regret.

But.

But now it was different.

She didn't feel like a servant anymore. Now she was… something else. Somewhere in the last twenty-four hours she had changed. And it wasn't just Vollex's death. It was… The image of silver filaments swaying and rippling as if in response to some unseen breeze rose involuntarily in her mind. She remembered the weight of Vollex's body jerking backwards against her. She heard the wet, gasping rattle of his dying breath in his throat. But, what she remembered most of all, what continued to burn in her mind even now, was the overwhelming desire to know exactly what was going on.

She stopped suddenly, hands thrust in her pockets, brow furrowed. She glanced across at yet another poster, long-faded, dust clinging to its surface. It depicted a half-open door, light spilling from it, casting a misshapen alien shadow across the lower half of the paper. Black, squat letters were stamped in the top left-hand quarter:

_"__Keep the door of doubt SHUT."_

An unaccountable anger shot through her and, before she really understood what she was doing, she reached out and tore the stiff, brittle paper from the wall. She watched her hands work in a frenzy of motion, watched the simple unambiguous image distort and twist, watched the flat, rectangular shape that had probably occupied that space on the wall for at least a hundred years become an irregular ball of creased and meaningless paper. Become rubbish, trash. Heart pounding fiercely in her chest, she flung it away from her, watching it roll away down the corridor. Back the way she had come.

She stood stock still for a moment, her mouth dry, breath ragged.

Turning briskly on her heel, she headed for the interrogation cells.

* * *

_"__What in the Emperor's name is that?"_

_The comforting darkness of the auspex array flaring once. Twice. Three times. Again and again and again. In the city, on the plains, contacts appeared out of thin air._

_He knows this moment like the scar on his face, like the sure swift plunge of the dagger into his side. He can still taste his fear. He can still feel the strain of maintaining the useless façade, the hollow illusion of control._

_"Status report. Now!"_

_"Vox signals are garbled, but…" The comms officer's face was waxen in the flickering crimson light of cogitator banks and auspex displays, his eyes deep pits in which fear and incomprehension lurked. It would be easy to believe that hell was here, on the bridge of the _Indomitable Wrath_, not on the surface of the planet below. Words failed the comms officer in the end. He remembers that. In the end, the young officer simply patched the communications from the planet's surface through to the bridge speakers._

_"… everywhere… they're everywhere…"_

_"… kind of daemon…"_

_"… claw and fang…"_

_"… broken through! Oh, Emperor, they've broken through!"_

_There were screams of terror and of dying, the almost plaintive whine of lasfire, the grumbling thump of heavy munitions, the scything shrieks of things that had no place in this reality. He looked at the auspex screen and saw the enemy contacts increase, cluster, swarm._

_He heard his voice as if from a great distance. He was surprised at how calm he sounded. Gnostos, he remembers thinking, would be proud._

_"Tell Major-General Farnek to pull his troops back to the city. Head for the cathedral."_

Yes, he remembered this.

And now he was living it again – this time in the heart of the chaos, not suspended above it.

With an immense effort of will, he took a step backwards. The daemon's razor-thin mouth smirked and, like a dog who has suddenly acquired a newer, richer scent, it froze, its dirty yellow eyes growing distant, before it jerked its gnarled body around and loped off into the city.

Brecht glanced across at the one remaining trooper and grew still once more, a familiar cold fear settling in his bones. There had been two portals, he reminded himself. The other… thing that had come through the second one now held Dix's partner in a tight embrace. Brecht had a brief impression of a humanoid form, bound tightly in wide leather strips. Slender arms were wrapped sinuously around the trooper, holding the poor lad against the wickedly sharp hooks haphazardly adorning the creature's torso.

The thing's head was thrust downwards and Brecht couldn't quite make out what it was doing to the trooper, but, as he watched, the man twitched, arching his back, flinging his arms out wide. The creature looked up at him, then, and he was shocked to see that her eyes were human. And completely clouded by desire.

The head thrust down again and Brecht finally understood exactly what he was seeing.

_"__Emperor protect me from the corruption of the flesh, from the betrayal of desire. I dedicate my body to Your service and Your will. Guard my soul against the pleasures of evil. In Your Name, I pray." _

The Second Catechism of Denial, first coined by Saint Luciel of Menelon over five thousand years ago, rose to the surface of his mind, but he found himself completely unable to utter it.

With a long shuddering moan of pleasure, Dix's comrade died and his body crumbled into dust. The daemon straightened up and, hips swaying provocatively, walked slowly towards him.

Suddenly, everything became sharp, more intense. The tiny granules of grit and dirt beneath his bare feet scratched against his skin. The lining of the greatcoat caressed his body as it shifted minutely against it. The austere bulk of the Cathedral of Saint Alberic the Vengeful seemed to press down on him. He could almost feel its weight looming over him.

And then there was her.

She was beautiful. Eyes the colour of a summer's sky regarded him with amusement from a face that was surely sculpted by a master artist. Cheekbones, that were so sharp he was sure he would cut himself were he to caress her face, framed a mouth that was full and wide. As he watched, it parted to reveal gleaming white teeth and a slender tongue that slid past their sharpened points to wet the bottom lip beyond. Long hair was bound in a multitude of thick strands, through which gleaming white maggots crawled and writhed, as if aroused by such close proximity to her form.

Her body was lithe and muscular, small breasts jutting proudly. She moved with the languid grace of the consummate predator. He watched the play of muscles in her legs and felt a stab of lust in his gut. She reached out a slender graceful hand and caressed his cheek tenderly.

"Hello, little man," she breathed and his knees almost gave way as he inhaled the sweet cloying scent that washed over him.

Her touch inflamed him. The voice in his brain that screamed its desperate warning was drowning in a wide red tide that washed violently through him.

"I…"

"Shhhh," she whispered, leaning in closer. He could see the maggots in her hair distend and swell, dozens of them struggling urgently in blind lust.

He slid his arms around her waist, cutting his palm open on one of the sharpened hooks that adorned it. He welcomed the pain.

She looked at him, her mouth twisting cruelly. "You bleed for me. How… sweet."

His tongue was thick and his jaw worked awkwardly. "I… want… you."

Stroking his face gently, she leaned in to lick the tears he had not even realised he had shed. "Of course you do, my little man."

Pain blossomed like sweet summer flowers in his chest and abdomen. More hooks, snaring him, penetrating his flesh. He felt the beauty of it. To surrender to it - to embrace it – seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

Sighing, she pulled back. He looked down and saw his blood glistening on her torso. He tried to pull her back, but suddenly he was too weak and he half stumbled, half fell to the ground. She knelt by him, careful now not to touch him. She needed him to hear, not feel.

"Not now, little man. Not now," she breathed, the words penetrating the sweet memory of sensation that threatened to overwhelm his mind. "But soon. He is coming and you are his and he is mine. When next we meet, little man, you will have what your flesh desires." She glanced over her shoulder at the cathedral behind her. A split second later, the ground shook and Brecht found himself thrown forwards, scraping his face on the hard concrete of the cathedral plaza.

The daemon straightened, her voice suddenly harsh. "Now run, little man! RUN!"

Dragging himself to his feet, Brecht threw one last longing look at the daemon and did exactly as he was told.

* * *

Dranguille was waiting for her just outside the detention suite door. Some small part of Livia was surprised by that. She'd half expected the other woman to have started the interrogation without her. Well, more than half, really. Perhaps the interrogator had acquired some measure of respect for her after all.

But, as Livia's purposeful stride ate up the last few metres between them, that notion was quickly dispelled by the other woman's sneer and the condescension in her tone as she spoke.

"Listen carefully, sister. This is my interrogation. I will lead. You will sit and keep very quiet." Dranguille leaned in towards her, her one good eye glinting like steel in the harsh sterile light of the corridor. Livia could smell the antiseptic emollient on the interrogator's red raw skin. "Ms LaFayette hasn't been touched. Yet. But that all might change in the next few minutes. If you find you lack the stomach for the job, you may excuse yourself quietly and walk out."

Livia thought back to the poster on the wall, to the sight of it rolling away from her, its message lost. She returned Dranguille's gaze evenly.

"I'll be fine."

Satisfied, Dranguille began to turn away, but stiffened in surprise as Livia grabbed her arm. The Sister Hospitaller gave a small, tight smile.

"But, Vivienne, if your questions don't give me the answers I need, I reserve the right to ask some of my own."

Dranguille opened her mouth to utter some sort of retort, but Livia was already moving past her, nodding to the stormtrooper who opened the door for her, and into the cell beyond.


	30. Chapter 5f

Brachius City's spaceport was quieter than its much larger sister port in Fortis Secundus, the planet's capital city and seat of Imperial government. The overwhelming majority of official communication – diplomatic envoys, officially sanctioned trade convoys, military transports, Imperial titheships – between the Imperium and Phrysia Secundus was channelled through the port at Fortis. This left Brachius as the spaceport of choice for the occasional rogue trader vessel and in-system transports from the moon mines of Phrysia Tertius, as well as the salvage ships that intermittently scoured the asteroid reefs of Phrysia Extremis and Balderon, the outermost planet whose erratic orbit had historically played havoc with inbound vessels in previous centuries.

Situated some two and a half kilometres from the city centre, the Brachius City spaceport sprawled over roughly fifteen square kilometres of the planet's surface. From the vantage point of the two hundred metre high control spire, its grey, blast-marked rockcrete apron seemed nothing more than a child's playground, the squat transport ships and the massive vehicles that serviced them like the toys favoured by Phrysia Secundus' elite.

On the ground, the perspective was quite different.

"Blue Sector Command to Blue Seven. Report."

Ferris scowled as he fingered the vox bead at his throat. "Blue Seven responding, Command. What's the problem?"

Gramk Ferris had been a security controller at Brachius City spaceport for the last seven years and he knew this section of the port's perimeter well. He also knew that sometimes the sector commanders liked to invent little errands for him and his colleagues just to keep them on their toes.

"There's some kind of… anomaly on the auspex in your quadrant, Blue Seven. Near Storage Unit 576B. I'd like you to check it out."

Ferris snorted, pausing a moment to look out across the weed-infested rockcrete leading from his current position by the perimeter wall to the functional, whitewashed storage sheds that clustered together a few hundred metres away. It would take him a couple of minutes to get there.

"Come on, Makintey. You can do better than that."

Junior Commander Makintey's voice was devoid of its usual bonhomie. "We're not messing around here, Ferris. We're running diagnostics now, but our working hypothesis is that something might have made it over the wall."

"Might?"

"Look, just get over there. Security servitors are on the blink in the storage sectors at the moment. Until the tech-priests find the time to…"

"Alright, alright." Sighing, Ferris unslung his lasgun and began the trek to the storage sheds. "I'm on it. Blue Seven out."

Not waiting for an official sign-off, he killed the vox channel.

* * *

For the fourth time in as many minutes, Simon Dieter Weil mumbled an apology and stepped aside for the thin-faced man in the navy blue overcoat. For the fourth time in as many minutes, he almost stumbled as he realised that he had come perilously close to standing on a dead body. For the fourth time in as many minutes, he found himself wondering what in all the Emperor's wide, vast galaxy he was doing here.

There were three members of the Arbites investigation team and Simon Dieter Weil was quickly growing to hate all of them. Having four people in Marchmont's office made the place feel somewhat cramped. Factor in a couple of corpses, and it was beginning to feel oppressively claustrophobic. The fact that Weil had absolutely nothing to contribute to the investigation team's efforts, as they opened cabinets and scanned walls with auspex equipment, didn't help. But Dranguille had made her feelings clear. He was here in a supervisory capacity. And, by the Golden Throne, that was just what he was going to do.

If only he could work out how. He glanced across at the desk yet again and frowned, frustrated. An Arbites investigator, the girl whose name he couldn't remember, was kneeling down to one side of the bulky piece of furniture, examining the wood with a portable auspex that beeped at regular intervals. Weil fought down a stab of envy. Even if her efforts were yielding no result, at least she was managing to look busy.

Marchmont's severed head had been the first object to be removed from the office, but not before the lead Arbites investigator, a sergeant whose bland, inoffensive face had left Weil completely unprepared for the acid sharpness of his tongue, had performed a number of forensic tests on the grisly object in situ. As far as Weil knew, the head had been packed away somewhere, but the body remained behind the desk, its expensive suit and zymba-silk shirt stiff with their erstwhile owner's blood. He contemplated the corpse now, making an effort to overcome the strong sense of revulsion he felt at the sight of the brutally severed blood vessels and mangled flesh.

He glanced again at the girl by the desk – purely out of professional interest, he told himself – and then back to Marchmont's corpse. He frowned. There was something in the body's positioning that felt… what? He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but…

Almost without thinking, he cleared his throat. The girl looked up, working hard to keep the flash of annoyance she must have felt from reaching her eyes. But it was there, nevertheless, in the grim set of her mouth and the way she held herself as she straightened. The other investigator, dark-skinned and tall, was scanning the far wall by the window. He half-turned to look at him, auspex poised in his hand.

"Yes?"

It wasn't the girl who spoke, or the man by the wall, but the sergeant standing almost directly behind him.

"Erm… the… the…" Weil stopped himself. This was ridiculous. He was an agent of the Inquisition – not some stuttering schola student. He turned to the sergeant and looked him full in his dull, unremarkable face. "Marchmont. How did he die?"

The sergeant's right eyebrow began to rise and his mouth opened, no doubt to facilitate the utterance of yet another caustic comment. Weil forestalled him hastily.

"Obviously, I know… I know how he died. But… what was the sequence of events leading up to his death?" He glanced again at the corpse, taking a step closer to get a better look at it. He was aware of three pairs of eyes on him now. Another step. And another. Yes, there it was. He thought so... The left hand was resting in Marchmont's lap; the right arm dangled loosely by his side. "Did he know his killer?" Weil glanced up at the sergeant. "There's no sign of prolonged struggle, is there?"

The sergeant considered this for a moment. "No," he said, finally. "No, there isn't. Nails are clean. And the corpse hasn't been moved as far as we can tell."

A thought occurred to Weil. "Unless there was some sort of tranquiliser involved?"

Unsure of where exactly this was going, the sergeant frowned and turned to the dark-skinned man. "Well, Fowke?"

The other arbites officer shook his head quietly. All eyes returned to Weil. He did his best to ignore them. Smiling an apology at the girl as he brushed past her, he moved round to the back of the room. He was standing behind Marchmont's body now, but he wasn't seeing dried blood and the hideous glistening stump of a neck. He was imagining Marchmont sat at his desk, talking to the thing that would eventually kill him. Relaxed? Maybe not entirely. But, cool. Oh, yes, if Marchmont had been anything it was unflappable.

"So maybe they're having a conversation, Marchmont and his killer. Maybe everything's nice and friendly. Maybe…" In his mind's eye, the body stopped breathing, stopped talking. It became a corpse again, a defiled and ugly thing, bloodied and bruised.

Bruised.

Weil bent closer, examining the torn neck, even as he fought a wave of nausea that threatened to wash over him.

"Don't touch it. That could be valuable…"

"I have no intention of…" Weil straightened up, a gleam of triumph in his eyes. "He was attacked from the rear, wasn't he? The bruising on the neck is much heavier at the back, isn't it?" The sergeant nodded slowly, but Weil barely noticed. He was talking more quickly now, words tripping over themselves in their haste to leave his mouth. "His attacker did what I've just done. Walked round the desk, while he was talking. And then he – or she, I suppose – struck. But, surely, if you're Marchmont, you want to keep any potential danger in sight. Surely, you'd turn around to keep your visitor in full view. Surely…"

The sergeant was observing him through narrowed eyes. "What are you getting at?"

Weil was looking at the surface of the desk. Apart from the broad bloody stain in the centre, it was clean. When the arbites unit had removed the head, they'd also taken whatever was lying on the desk's surface. It had been one of the first things they'd done, once they'd determined the rough time of death.

"Maybe," said Weil, slowly, "he didn't turn, because he knew there was no point. Maybe he didn't turn, because he was doing something else at the time. Something important." He glanced up at the arbites sergeant and smiled. "Sergeant, I want everything that was on this desk back in here now. We're going to find ourselves a clue!"

* * *

Another tremor flung him to the ground and he cried out, as he scraped the palms of his hands against the gritty rockcrete. The stitch had returned with a vengeance and he bowed his head to the ground as if in prayer, forcing the air into his lungs.

Desperately, he tried to think. This was proving difficult, not only because of his physical exertions, but also because of the vast, formless terror that pressed hungrily against his mind. The urge to look over his shoulder, to gauge the distance between his physical body and the bulk of the cathedral on the city's skyline, was almost irresistible. But, resist it he must.

With an effort of will, he remembered the bridge of the Indomitable Wrath, the crew's professionalism the thinnest veneer over the gut-churning realisation that things were going terribly, catastrophically wrong. Major-General Farnek's forces had never made it back to the city. The thronging, demented legions of daemons that had appeared on the Mellajar Plains had swallowed them whole. He remembered…

… _unit call signs on the auspex guttering and dying like votive candles in a storm…_

_… the wan face of the gunnery officer as he asked her for a firing solution on the city…_

_… the word that hung in the close, hot air of the bridge like the blackest of funeral palls…_

_… the word that only he could say…_

How long?

How long did he have?

He had to get away. Another tremor, gentler this time, rumbled through the ground. It had broken free of the cathedral vault; of that, he was certain. Even now, it was moving - the ancient evil that had been buried beneath the surface of this world for centuries now emerging slowly into the light. Emperor, he had to get away!

Another struggle. Another gargantuan effort. He stood to his feet under the blood-smeared sky, his greatcoat streaked with dust. His bloodshod feet moved jerkily, as if controlled by a capricious puppeteer. Slowly, painfully, he stumbled on.

Gibbering insanely, a pack of lesser daemons, some no bigger than a rat, skittered past him on clicking claws. They ignored him for the most part, revelling in their newfound corporeality, scampering up sheer brick walls or gouging long, thick trails in the metal of abandoned vehicles.

Brecht watched them disappear up the roadway, feeling a momentary twinge of envy at their speed and agility. He looked around him, disconsolately. The buildings seemed closer than he remembered them, looming over him like sneering schoolmasters, chastising him for his many failures. Dark shapes, indistinct and barely moving, haunted doorways and refuse-clogged alleys. The scorched skeletons of land vehicles reared out of black asphalt like the remains of prehistoric creatures on some blasted beach.

The daemon's kiss still lingered on his lips. His flesh still bled where her hooks had pierced his skin.

Guilt weighed him down, an intolerable, immovable burden that made every step an immense undertaking, every breath a tortuous, frantic scrabbling for life. Too many failures. Too many betrayals.

Another tremor. The ground shivered and he almost fell, steadying himself against a lamp post that emerged from the sidewalk at a crazy, drunken angle. It was only when the ground ceased its restive shuddering that his mind registered the sticky substance under his fingers. He looked up and snatched back his hand involuntarily. The top of the lamp post had been broken off and a human corpse had been impaled upon it; the cold steel was slick with slowly congealing blood.

Brecht wiped his hand furiously on his greatcoat, but the blood had already stained his fingers and would not be so easily removed. He glanced around and gasped in shock. The street he was in was… changed.

Under a glowering, angry sky, the city had become a place of lurking hunger. The high-pitched shrieks and cackles of creatures, who had no right to exist in this reality echoed and rebounded from the crumbling sides of ruined buildings, while the reverberating impacts of monstrous footfalls shook the broken rockcrete. Corpses hung on the sides of buildings, torn skin flapping in a fitful breeze that was hot and wet like the breath of a lumbering beast. Strange sigils which seared the gaze with the promise of blasphemous secrets loosely kept adorned the entranceways to hab blocks and administratum buildings. Despair fluttered in his breast like a frantic butterfly.

He hadn't realised, hadn't truly understood, what it had been like at the end.

From behind him, came a bellowing, braying sound, a triumphant trumpeting of furious glee. He turned quickly. And fell to his knees, struck down by the corrupted majesty of what he had seen.

An unholy host, caparisoned in blood and the ragged skins of its victims, marched with languid grace down the highway towards him. From where he was kneeling, he could see eyes gleaming with feral lust, taloned hands flexing, longing to tear and rend. Some daemons were squat and ugly, slobbering their hunger in thick ropes of drool that glistened in silver trails on the ravaged ground; others were sharp and angular, crooked travesties of the humanoid form, shoulder blades jutting like stunted wings from broken backs. And still others moved with the effortless fluidity of the consummate hunter, their skin black as the void between stars and their eyes the dark, fecund red of arterial spray.

But, they were not what had sent Brecht to his knees. Desperately, he sought to anchor himself in this reality. He felt the hardness of the rockcrete through his knees and twisted feet; he felt the slickness of blood on his abdomen, the ragged edges of weeping wounds rubbing angrily against the lining of his coat; he felt the roughness of tiny particles of dust trapped between the ground and the sweating, shivering skin of his splayed hands. Another elephantine roar blared in his ears, shaking his belief in the physical world as violently as the monstrous footfalls shook the ground beneath him.

He sought refuge in his memories. Perhaps by remembering the bridge of the Indomitable Wrath, he would somehow find himself transported there. But, the memories were elusive, cowering in the corners of his mind, cowering from the monstrous, gargantuan shape that towered over the daemon army's lines. It was an image that picked at the threads of his sanity. It was an image, he knew, of his doom.

The thing that had been bound beneath the cathedral had been old long before it had been contained. And it had not spent its centuries in captivity idly. It had grown and learned, absorbing the emotions of a developing and then industrialised Imperial world, swelling like a cyst below the skin of the world, feeding upon its anger and violence, its hope and its hate.

He bowed his head, willing himself not to look at it. His breath came in deep, shuddering gasps and his cheeks were wet – not, he knew, with tears, but with blood. Fear lay like a shroud upon him, constricting, suffocating.

The thing rumbled forward and the pressure that had pushed him to his knees intensified. Involuntarily, he cried out and, in his panic, a memory darted across his mind's eye, fleeting but vivid. Desperately, he lunged for it.

_The bridge was bathed in a crimson light and the gunnery officer's eyes were expectant but grim._

_They had all felt it – even from their position just over 20,000 kilometres above the surface. Something was loose on Carnus Majestus. Something powerful. Something evil._

_Transmissions from the surface had ceased several minutes ago._

_Brecht turned to the sensorium officer, a heavily augmented man, whose brass face plate glinted in the emergency lighting._

_He fought to keep his voice level. "Survivors? Are there any…?"_

_The sensorium officer's cobalt blue ocular implants regarded him coldly for a second. His grating metallic voice was flat and emotionless. "Isolated pockets only. They die as we speak."_

The ground lurched from under him once more, but he ignored it, concentrating desperately on the images in his mind. A thunder of footsteps swelled and broke around him; the stink of sulphur and bitter-sweet decay washed over him, as the daemon army swept past him. He was a mote of dust drifting in the void, insignificant, beneath their notice. A terrible shadow fell across him and the backs of his hands burned with an ancient cold.

The thing towered above him, reeking of the grave. Demented whispers swirled and eddied in the foetid air.

He screwed his eyes tight shut.

_Over fifteen light years away, Gnostos was engaged in the pursuit of a heretic psyker on the death world of Vulpus XI, but Brecht felt his presence hovering behind him on the bridge of the Indomitable Wrath. He could sense the old man's disapproval. Well, he wasn't here, was he? Now there was only one person who could authorise the ultimate sanction._

_He turned to the gunnery officer, the word that only he could speak bitter as ash in his mouth._

He remembered. Fear swelled inside him until it seemed that there wasn't room for anything else. But, he remembered.

_The gunnery officer's eyes were a deep, dark brown. In any other circumstance, she might be considered beautiful._

_"Exterminatus."_

The word roared out of him.

"Exterminatus! Exterminatus! Exterminatus!"

The thing's insidious whispering faltered as another sound began to penetrate. It began as a keening wail, a plaintive howl in the desecrated sky.

"Exterminatus!"

Tears were falling from his clenched shut eyes. He thought they were of relief.

"Exterminatus!"

His voice was hoarse and broken, but he didn't care. He had done his duty for the Emperor. For the whole of his race.

His eardrums burst as the planet's air pressure increased suddenly. Agony and silence crushed him in their embrace.

But he didn't care.

He fell prostrate to the ground, watched, for a second, the patterns of light playing across the inside of his eyelids. He saw the darkness gathering at the edges of his vision and smiled.

"Exterminatus," he whispered.

**End of Chapter Five**


	31. Interlude 5

**Interlude**

_Adyria Six_

Under an ornate canopy of polarised glass, the air filters blow a gentle, cooling breeze, which stirs, but does not upset, the delicate arrangements of lace and flower on the dining table. From concealed speakers in the nearby shrubbery, music trickles across the room. A small, delicate bird trills and flutters behind bars of gold, while immaculately dressed servants, their jackets and breeches a deep blue, stand stock still, the conversation at the table ebbing and flowing around them.

If they notice the undercurrent of tension in the words of their betters, they do not acknowledge it. Their faces remain blank, impassive masks, eyes as dead as those of the servitors who tend the hydroponic farm over a hundred metres below them. At this position at the top of the slender spire known colloquially as the Warden's Watch, the air is thin. The hydroponic farm provides oxygen as well as the vegetables that sit on the priceless china plates before this meal's six participants.

Gerellian Brossus Heironymus Velm pushes a piece of dark green asparagus around his plate, as if it is a unit counter on an old-fashioned tactica board. It has been over a minute since he last raised his fork to his mouth. His meal is barely touched.

"And, of course, I said to Emelda that we couldn't possibly attend Genevieve's ball as it clashed with the state dinner we're holding for our honoured visitor, who's due to arrive any day now. Emelda was most put out, but I think she understood…"

Velm lets his fork drop quite deliberately. The brief clattering sound gives the speaker pause and he glances up to stare at her searchingly.

What has happened to them? He ponders this in the charged moment in which every eye is turned towards him. He loved her once. Of that he is certain. He tries to remember why. He looks at the woman next to him and sees in her face a pampered vacuity that he finds utterly repellent. When did this start? How could he have let it get to this point? Even the eyes, he notes, have changed. They used to sparkle when she laughed, but now they are dulled by indolence and a complacent acceptance of the cluttered, ultimately pointless, life she now lives.

"Darling?"

Darling? No. It has been some time since either of them has been that. He reaches for the fork again, but stops himself. There are things he wants to say. Things he must not say.

He lets his gaze sweep the table past Briella and her uncomprehending questioning gaze, taking in Inara, her face strangely haunted – although by what he cannot tell – and Pol, so solemn these days, staring at him as if it was his duty to do so. At least the boy's tutors, Gelder and Rostrick, have the good grace to fix their attention on their meals.

There are things he wants to say.

"Nothing," he mutters, glancing down at the plate. "It's nothing. Francisco's death…"

And there is some truth in that. An advisor – no, a friend – like Francisco Kirrim is not found every day. His death in the Sink was horrific both for its savagery and for the unavoidable gap it left in the hierarchy of Hive 13. Yes, Kirrim's death accounts for some of his discomfort this evening. But it does not account for all of it.

Briella pats his hand, gem-encrusted rings flashing from plump fingers. She smiles.

"I know you miss him, darling," she says. "But at least you acted swiftly to put down the vicious animals who murdered him. No one can say you didn't act quickly, dear."

No, he thinks. No one can say that. He remembers visiting the Sink after the first wave of regulators had swept through it. The stink of burnt flesh still lingers in his nostrils. The sight of shapeless corpses, their skin blackened and weeping thick veils of smoke, hunched in hovel doorways, is still seared in his mind. No. No one can say that he delayed in bringing the Emperor's retribution to those who had murdered His trusted servant.

Briella is looking around the table, her gaze resting on the gaunt, rakishly handsome Rostrick for a moment.

"But, I think everyone here would agree that to dwell on that tragedy unduly would be… well, a bad thing to do, darling." The bejewelled fingers tap his hand again.

_Would it?_

Briella frowns. "Of course it would, darling. You know that's not what he would have wanted."

He blinks, uncertainly. He hadn't realised he had spoken the question aloud. He looks around the table again. Pol is stiff, unsure of how to respond to the growing strangeness in the room, but intensely aware of it nevertheless. Inara is fiddling with her hair, twisting a fat lock of it around her slender fingers. Around and around and around…

"Darling?" Briella is laughing nervously. "Eat your meal, love. The pan-fried anja-bird is simply wonderful. And chef's done a special surprise for dessert…"

He stands abruptly, the chair scraping across the floor. A nearby servant darts forward but Velm waves him away with a sharp motion of his hand.

"I'm sorry. I'm not hungry and there's work to be done." He smiles. It is an effort, but he manages it. "I shall be in my study. Please, do not disturb me."

He steps back, his mind racing. So many thoughts. Francisco's death looms large, but there are other concerns. The promethium production continues to fall with no discernible cause. There are whisperings in the middle sectors. Children disappear from securely locked habs. Strange spiralling signs appear on factorium walls. The air is tense and febrile. Random acts of violence mar the peace of otherwise stable neighbourhoods.

And over it all, looms the Arbites Judge. Days away from arrival. Days away from judgment.

He takes one last look at his family. Do they not understand? Do they not realise? The role of Warden of the Great Sand Sea is not a hereditary one. Velm was appointed to the post by the then planetary governor, who, despite being an inbred fool, nevertheless realised the importance of the planet's largest promethium refineries being in the hands of someone who was competent to do the job.

Velm looks at them and sees with a clarity that they do not. This – the table, the food, the servants, the silly little inconsequentialities of their social world – is as insubstantial as the deep desert mirages that frequently tempt the prospectors and scavengers with the promise of profit.

Do they not see the danger they are in?

Briella begins to say something, but he forestalls her with a look and a sharply upraised hand.

"Do not," he repeats, "disturb me."

Turning on his heel, he leaves the dining room, the plaintive trilling of the bird in its cage of gold following him out. He does not look back.


	32. Chapter 6a

**Chapter Six**

The regular beeping of the medical auspex was the only sound in Sister Elinore's room. Sitting in the functional chair at the foot of her bed, Gaspar Torvald was beginning to find it comforting in an odd sort of way. Or maybe it was just being in her presence.

Two years. It had been two years since he'd joined Brecht's inquisitorial team. Fresh out of the medicae schola program on his homeworld of Phrysia Majoris, he had been recruited by Thesk as one of the most promising medicae auxiliaries of his intake. He occasionally wondered about that. If it hadn't been for Thesk – and, by extension, Brecht – he'd probably have been assigned a Guard or Navy posting and his life would undoubtedly be very different. Or over.

Torvald frowned. Issues of fate and consequence were never far from your mind when you worked for the Inquisition. The line between good and evil, between faith and heresy, was one that he had always been taught was clear and well-defined. If anything, working for the Inquisition – or Brecht, at least – muddied those distinctions, calling into question their absoluteness.

Perhaps that was why he felt himself drawn here more and more. A Sister of Battle represented the kind of moral certainty he had grown up with. To Torvald, the few Sisters that he'd seen – and that was generally from a distance – had possessed a fervent determination that he both admired and, on some level, feared, largely because he knew he did not possess those qualities himself. Oh, certainly, he was as pious as the next man. He prayed. He went to the chapel several times a week when he could. He even listened to the priest's sermons, sometimes. But, a Sister… She was someone who put those sermons into action, sometimes violently, always decisively. To see someone like that brought low – to see her lie at death's door – was a profoundly disturbing experience.

He stood up slowly, almost as if he were in a sanctum. Almost as if Elinore were in some sense holy herself. A few hours ago, he would have questioned that sort of response, but, after what he and Mbeki had seen earlier, it seemed entirely appropriate. Hesitantly, respectfully, he walked towards the head of the bed, until he could see the Sister's face clearly. He took in the burnt, blotchy patches of skin on her cheeks and forehead, the singed eyebrows and cracked lips, the golden hair forming a dishevelled halo around her head.

_She had to live._The thought was more than just a thought. It burned in his mind and chest with a conviction that went beyond the theology of the waffling priest and his poorly structured sermons. She had to live, because the universe was too dark and terrible a place for him to endure without her in it. She had to live, because the sacrifices she had made had to be worth something. Or, why should he – why should anyone – carry on?

He found himself, not for the first time, with a burning desire to pray, but, once again, the words that fit how he felt simply would not come. He watched her ravaged, perfectly serene face.

"Please," he began, not knowing really how to carry on, "please, just let her…"

"Torvald!"

The voice that cut across his tentative words was Mbeki's – taut, commanding. Frightened. He blinked in surprise, turning round to see her framed in the doorway. Her eyes were wide and staring. Yes, he realised, she was frightened alright. Terrified.

"What…"

"Come quickly! It's the Inquisitor!"

* * *

The cell was unpleasant, dirty and stank of stale sweat. Dark, faded stains of indeterminate origin streaked the cracked ceramic wall tiles at irregular intervals and the floor was bare concrete, unevenly laid. Long loops of chains hung from the ceiling, where thin lumen strips flickered uncertainly. The room exuded despair and helplessness, the dull echoes of remembered pain. In short, thought Livia, it was just like every other cell in the Hole.

LaFayette was seated at a small table more or less in the centre of the room. She was flanked by two heavily armed stormtroopers, their hellguns held across their chests. A scribe, his ocular augmetics winking dispassionately, stood to one side, his back almost resting against the wall. A portable cogitator-recorder, an arcane device of brass levers, tiny sputtering gears and scrolling vellum, thrummed with power in his grip. The scribe murmured litanies to the device's machine spirit, his voice as emotionless as his slack, expressionless face.

Livia waited for Dranguille to sit down and then joined her. The chair was simple, a sturdy construction of wood and padded velvet. Its legs made a brief high-pitched screech as they scraped across the floor.

The Sister Hospitaller took a moment to look at LaFayette properly for the first time. The woman was a curiosity to her. Livia had treated pampered merchants' wives and, on one particularly tedious occasion, a governor's daughter, but the person who returned her gaze with muted defiance was as far removed from them as an old Terran jaguar was from a prize sow. Eloise LaFayette had _done_things. That much was clear from the firmness of her jaw, the hint of steel in her dark eyes. That this was all crowned by the ruins of an elaborate hairdo only served, along with the torn and bloodstained blouse, to emphasise her difference from the elegant aristocrats who hung on the coattails of powerful men the length and breadth of the Imperium. She risked a glance at Dranguille. The interrogator was examining LaFayette, too, but coolly as if the woman was no more than a tissue sample in a medical auspex casket.

Dranguille placed her palms on the table's surface, light glinting from an ornate ring on the third finger of her right hand. She smiled at LaFayette. It was a smile utterly devoid of warmth or humour.

"So," she said quietly, "what would you like to tell me?"

* * *

Weil was resisting the urge to pace. Enough time had passed since the arbites sergeant had led his team out of the room for his initial sense of triumph at having found a breakthrough in the puzzle of Marchmont's death to turn into a sense of anxious self-doubt. What if his line of reasoning was unsound? What if there had been nothing of importance on the desk at all? The arbites team already viewed him as an irrelevance. What if all his theatrics – and he had been just a little theatrical, he thought – just served to reinforce that view?

He looked up, as the arbites sergeant and the girl whose name he still couldn't remember walked into the room, the sergeant stepping carefully over a ganger corpse as he did so.

"We really need to move those," Weil heard him mutter, but it was what the sergeant was carrying that held his attention.

"Is that…?"

The sergeant pushed past Weil and stood behind the desk, placing a handful of scraps of paper on its surface. Each one was individually sealed in a clear plastic sleeve. Weil edged closer and saw that almost all of the pieces of paper were stained with deep red blotches. Marchmont's blood. There had been a lot of it on the desk, after all.

The girl flashed Weil a smile so brief he thought for a moment that he'd imagined it. Weil smiled back. Perhaps things were starting to improve after all. Moving with the certainty of a hungry bernak-hawk, the sergeant's finger stabbed down towards one evidence sleeve in particular.

"That one," he said. "It was about fifteen centimetres from the edge of the desk and the writing on it looks considerably more hurried than that found on the other pieces."

Weil leaned forward and frowned. "It's also considerably more bloodstained than the others."

The sergeant nodded. "The head covered most of it. It's probably why we missed its significance."

Weil resisted the urge to smirk. _Yeah, right._He held his hand out to the sergeant. "May I?"

Wordlessly, the sergeant passed him the evidence sleeve and Weil held it up to the light. As far as he could tell, there was only one word written on the paper inside, but the first half of it was all but obliterated by the blood that had seeped onto the paper's surface.

"Something '-gant'. Elegant? Extravagant?" He shrugged.

Gently, the sergeant took the plastic-sheathed paper back. He was looking disappointed and seemed to be directing that disappointment at Weil personally – as if it was somehow his fault that Marchmont's head had sat on that particular piece of paper.

"Which doesn't," the sergeant said, heavily, "get us very far."

Weil tapped his chin, thoughtfully. "Maybe not, but maybe we're asking the wrong person." With a decisiveness he didn't entirely feel, he touched the vox bead at his throat, opening a medium range channel. "Arnolt? This is Weil at the investigation site. Could you put Interrogator Dranguille on, please?" He paused. "Well, Adjutant Smyre, then. I need to ask him something."

* * *

Torvald bent over Brecht, his mind racing. The Inquisitor was still unconscious, but he looked, if anything, paler than he had just a couple of hours ago. A thin sheen of sweat glistened like sickly dew on his cheek bones. The scar was a livid line on his face, looking for all the world like the tunnelled track of some parasitic worm.

"What's his pulse rate?"

On the other side of the bed, Mbeki straightened up. "112."

Torvald swore. "He needs some hydrochlorothiazide, then. Maybe." He turned to the medicae-servitor, which was still beeping insistently. "What is the patient's latent psychic stability indicator? And, for Throne's sake, turn that frakking alarm off."

He shared a glance with Mbeki while he waited for the servitor to provide him the requested information. The alarm cut off and an uneasy silence settled around the Inquisitor's bed.

The servitor's preternaturally calm voice cut through it. "The patient's psychic stability indicator is 11 marks over 4... Is 8 marks over 9... Is 12 marks over 5."

Torvald blinked in shock, his mouth partly open. "Th… that's impossible." Blinking again, he turned to Mbeki, who was staring blankly at him. "You've not dealt with many psykers have you? Alright, then. Let me explain. Brecht's normal psychic rating is something closer to 6 over 9. The first number represents active psychic ability, while the second represents underlying psychic potential - psychic stamina, if you will. For it to fluctuate like this is... well, it's not very good." He glanced down at Brecht's face again, a face that still glistened, not with sweat, but with its hardened residue - tiny frozen crystals of salt. "What in the Emperor's name…?"

"Gaspar… what's happening?"

Torvald sighed and his breath emerged as a stringy vapour.

"I don't know. I'm not an expert. But, if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that Brecht's talent has just reignited in some kind of… I don't know… survival reflex, perhaps." He looked up at her, swallowing nervously. He was trying his hardest not to shiver. "The bottom line is… I think that Brecht's psychic power is now entirely connected to his subconscious mind."

"What?"

Torvald's face was pale and pinched with cold. He licked his suddenly cracked lips. "And that's bad, Helene. Very bad. Forget the heretic cult and forget Vollex turning. If Brecht loses control of his connection to the warp, he'll become the greatest moral threat this planet's ever known."

* * *

"Come back!"

He opened his eyes and saw that the world was no longer white. As he made the effort to focus, he saw a sky the colour of torquoise and wispy lilac clouds chasing one another across it.

_I know where I am_was what he wanted to say, but the words came out as an unrecognisable croak.

"Good."

That voice again, gruff yet resonant. Deep, too. A strong voice, commanding. He thought he'd probably get on quite well with the owner of a voice like that.

A dark shadowy shape occluded the sky for a moment. He refocused his gaze and realised he was looking at a face. A scarred, weather-beaten face with eyes the colour of summer grass.

"I… I…"

"Don't try to talk yet. You look like you've gone toe to toe with a rabid squiggoth." The face drew back a little and Brecht got the impression of a massive armoured form. He tried to nod. He understood now.

Vague impressionistic images scurried through his mind. Broken bodies hanging from burned out buildings. An army of daemons stalking through the hollow husk of an Imperial city. A Sister of Battle, her face frozen in a rictus of agony, light streaming from her eyes. So much light.

_Elinore. I must find Elinore._

He shifted tentatively and was completely unsurprised to find that he was lying on his back again - although at least this time he was wearing something. Considering the august company he was in, that was just as well. It didn't do to dress down when dealing with the…

"Well, if you've finished daydreaming, I'll take you back to the barracks. There's someone who wants to see you."

As he stood up, Brecht had to lean on the armoured man for support, but that was alright. In one form or another, the entire human race had been doing that for millennia. He straightened up, his head not quite coming up to the other man's shoulder guard. A shoulder guard of gunmetal grey, on which was emblazoned a stylised lightning bolt. A scarlet lightning bolt.

He glanced across at the Space Marine next to him.

"So, how have you been, Brother Patroclus?"

The Space Marine shrugged, almost unbalancing Brecht in the process. "The Great War continues, Inquisitor. Men triumph; men falter. It was ever thus." He smiled sadly for a moment, before turning away. "Enough philosophising, Brecht. We've got to get moving. Brother Asclepius has been waiting for you."

Brecht frowned. "I've never heard of him."

The Space Marine's reply took several seconds to arrive and by that time the larger man was already five or six metres ahead of him, walking down a thin, winding dirt track.

"Oh, but he's heard of you, Inquisitor. He has most definitely heard of you."


	33. Chapter 6b

_Author's Note:_

_And _Nine-Tenths_ rumbles on. For those of you who like to know such things, chapter 6 marks the end of Book I. Which is probably something of a relief to any longsuffering reader who has been following it since I first started posting this back in (gulp!) 2010. Mind you, Book I does end on a triple cliffhanger so how much of a relief it actually _is_ to anyone really does remain to be seen._

_I'm always gratified to see that people are reading this somewhat unwieldy behemoth of mine. I'm not averse to comment, though. Feel free to review or PM me – even if (particularly if!) you disagree violently with something you find in here. I love the 40K setting, but I'm painfully aware that my knowledge of it has limits. (An early review quite rightly pointed out that Elinore's use of a bolter in the first chapter shouldn't have left her target's body recognisable as a body _at all_ never mind one on which you can discern mysterious facial markings. That comment was very useful and I've borne it in mind in later chapters.)_

_Oh, one final thing. You'll get to find out just _why_ the story's called 'Nine-Tenths' in this chapter, but you'll have to wait a little while first. On with the show..._

**Chapter Six Continued**

LaFayette cleared her throat and tossed back her hair. Livia thought it was a somewhat theatrical gesture, but then, she considered, she might be looking at things in an overly cynical fashion. After all, she didn't want to appear naïve in front of the Interrogator, did she?

"I want you to understand, Interrogator, that I have always been loyal to Emile. Despite what you may think of him, he was a decent man, a good man. I…"

"Oh, please. Spare me the eulogy." Dranguille's one good eye glittered scornfully. "Marchmont's 'decency' didn't save him in the end. Nor, I suspect, did it prevent him from playing both sides against the middle from time to time. I'm beginning to think that might be what's gone on here."

It was funny, thought Livia, how quickly someone's face can turn ugly. LaFayette glared at Dranguille her mouth twisted into a particularly unpleasant sneer, but all three women knew that that was just a performance.

LaFayette's gaze flickered to Livia. "And why are you here, Sister? Come to mop up the blood, have you?"

Livia stiffened. She supposed she should have expected something like this. LaFayette's questioning of her was obviously a distracting tactic, but how should she respond? Without waiting for a cue from Dranguille, she leaned forward and opted for the honest approach. "I've already done enough of that today," she said, quietly. "I'm here for the same reason Interrogator Dranguille is. I want answers. And, if you don't stop this charade soon, there will be blood flowing. And I know precisely where to cut."

Beside her, Dranguille remained perfectly motionless for a heartbeat and then smiled.

"Well, now we know where we all stand, let's try again." She paused, tapping the table top with a delicate forefinger. Once, twice. "Who killed your lover?"

LaFayette licked her lips. "If I knew that, do you think I would be sitting here talking to you now?"

Sighing heavily, Dranguille reached out to LaFayette and grabbed her by the hair in a movement so violent it almost took Livia's breath away. A solid thud echoed around the cell as Dranguille slammed the other woman's head into the table and kept it there. One of the storm troopers moved forward as if to assist, but Dranguille warned him off with a glare. She bent her head down low.

"If you answer one of my questions with a counter-question of your own again, no matter how 'clever' or 'brave' it may make you feel, I shall hand the good Sister here a scalpel. Do you understand me?" Something approaching a growl came from LaFayette's tousled head. Dranguille's grip tightened. "I said, do you understand?"

"Yes," said LaFayette, struggling to keep her voice even. "Yes, dammit!"

Dranguille released her and sat back. "Good. Who killed Emile Marchmont?"

"The cult!" spat LaFayette, her face red. "The cult did it. The cult that you were meant to have destroyed."

Dranguille's eye narrowed. Beside her, Livia's mind was racing. Everyone in the Hole had known about the investigation into the Brachian cult and they'd been ready for casualties in the early hours of the morning when the raid had taken place. Mercifully, there had been very few, but the manifestations of Chaos in the cells a few hours later had taken her and the rest of the medical team by surprise. And, then there was the visit to the Under-governor's mansion - a visit that had ended with Fenter dead, Vollex corrupted, Elinore unconscious and Brecht close to death. Was it possible that Brecht had somehow made a mistake? She glanced across at Dranguille. If the Interrogator was experiencing the same doubts that she was, then she was hiding them well.

"Go on," Dranguille said.

"You think you're so clever, don't you?" spat LaFayette, anger sparking in her eyes. "The Holy Inquisition, the vigilant servants of the Emperor… you've been played, the whole lot of you. Emperor help us all, you've been played." She slumped back in her chair, staring at Dranguille with sullen resentment. "The book was a clever idea, I'll give you that. I'm betting Brecht had some way of tracing it psychically, didn't he?"

Livia frowned. "You know about the book?"

Beside her Dranguille scowled. LaFayette turned to the Sister Hospitaller. The sneer had returned to her mouth. "There are a lot of things I know, Sister."

"Quite." Dranguille's voice was as cold and sharp as ice. "Give me a name."

LaFayette leaned forward. "Alright, then. Emile tried to protect me this morning, but I had a lot of time to think locked up in that room. There weren't many things he tried to keep from me, you know. He trusted me… loved me…" She lowered her gaze for a moment. "But, you don't stay ahead of the arbitrators for as long as I have without learning to keep your eyes and ears open." She glanced up, looking Dranguille squarely in the eye. "Varl. The bastard's name was Varl. I'd stake my life on it."

Dranguille nodded. From the inside pocket of her greatcoat, she produced a folded pict-capt. She slid it across the table to LaFayette, who took it gingerly, as if it might explode. She opened it up slowly and examined it for a few long seconds.

"Arielle," she breathed. "That's Arielle…"

"And the two men with her?"

LaFayette looked up. To Livia, her expression was unreadable, almost impossibly cold. "The big one is Varl. I don't know who the other one is."

Dranguille took the pict-capt back from her and it vanished into her greatcoat as quickly as it had appeared.

"Good," she said, briskly. "Finally, we're getting somewhere. So… who is this Varl? What relationship does he have with the cult?"

LaFayette opened her mouth to reply, when the cell door opened slowly. Dranguille kept her gaze on the prisoner, but Livia turned round to see the reassuring figure of Smyre silhouetted in the doorway.

The Adjutant coughed politely. "My apologies for interrupting, ma'am, Sister… but do you think I could have a word with you both outside for a moment? Some information has come to light that may have some bearing on your… conversation."

* * *

"What do we do, Gaspar? Thesk's in theatre and Livia's… well, I don't know where Livia is, but she said she shouldn't be disturbed."

Torvald stared intently at Brecht's face. Was it his imagination or was it getting slightly warmer than before? Brecht was a cryokene, wasn't he? Maybe the change in temperature was a positive sign…

He glanced over at Mbeki. "We need to stabilise him. Vox Thesk." He raised a placatory hand to forestall his colleague's protests. "I know, I know. Thesk'll go berserk. Thesk always goes berserk, but this is important." He licked his lips and turned to the medicae servitor, who was waiting patiently in the corner of the room. "Tell him… tell him I'm going to give Brecht a sedative and tell him to get down here as quickly as he can."

Mbeki nodded and made for the vox grille near the door.

Torvald started giving the servitor instructions.

* * *

The thin, winding dirt track took Brecht and the tall, broad form of the Space Marine through a craggy pass in the mountains. Shadows, cold and gloomy, swallowed them, thrown by enormous mottled pillars of stone that seemed to stretch like the arms of desperate supplicants towards the angry sky.

And the sky was angry. It had turned dark, the bright torquoise having been obscured by indigo clouds that roiled above them in restive motion. Crimson lightning flickered somewhere to the east, jagged forks playing across the clouds. For a split second, the landscape was bathed in a harsh, red light.

Patroclus turned to Brecht. "Well," he said heavily. "There's theatre for you." He stared at Brecht for a moment, as if the atmospheric disturbance was somehow the Inquisitor's fault. Which, in a way, thought Brecht, it was.

He grinned up at the Space Marine.

"Yes. Very portentous."

Turning away from him, Patroclus grunted dismissively and carried on down the path, forcing Brecht to hurry after him.

The two men carried on in somewhat strained silence for a while and the landscape began to change. The sheer sides of the mountain walls around them became less severe and isolated patches of pale green grass began to appear. The track became wider and started to slope gently downwards, curving to the right as it did so.

Patroclus quickened his pace and Brecht found himself having to jog just to keep up with him. The exertion made conversation, even if he had been inclined to initiate it, impossible. Brecht's boots, which he had somehow acquired - along with tunic and breeches - before he woke up here, made scuffling, scraping sounds as they dislodged loose rocks and slapped against the hard-packed earth of the track.

The two men followed the road round and they stopped as they breasted a small rise that afforded them an excellent view of the long, yet narrow valley below them.

Nestling in the deepest part of the valley, bordered on three sides by bastions of ancient, impenetrable rock, lay a complex of compact, sandstone buildings. Even from this distance, Brecht could see vehicle compounds and the squat, gleaming shapes of Rhino transports arrayed in evenly spaced rows. A pair of Predator tanks guarded the entrance to the compound and grey-armoured figures patrolled the outer perimeter, bolters cradled in gauntleted hands. Beyond the walls and other defences, Brecht could see a training yard where aspiring marines were drilled repeatedly, their bodies moving in complex unified patterns. He saw low simple buildings which contained the aspirants' meditation cells; he saw the solid, sandstone and marble construction whose small stained glass windows marked it out as a chapel; he saw the ornamented buttressed gothic might of the BloodEye, a building that towered over its more humble neighbours and, Brecht knew, contained enough secrets to whet the appetite of even the most jaded savant. On the far side of the complex, drill squares and habitations for fully initiated Marines could just be seen. Beyond them, near the far end of the valley, he knew lay a landing strip with a compliment of Thunderhawk transports. He drank in the view for a few seconds.

"It is good to be home," said Patroclus, his ordinarily gruff voice surprisingly gentle.

"I wouldn't know," murmured Brecht, his eyes narrowing as they took in yet more details of the landscape.

Above their heads, thunder rumbled like the distant memory of gunfire.

"Come," said Patroclus, turning to stare Brecht full in the face. "Brother Asclepius is waiting."

Brecht nodded, a faint, almost imperceptible motion of his head. He knew there were some Inquisitors who would never in a million years do what he was about to.

Slowly, with considerable care, Patroclus removed the gauntlet from his right hand. All the while he did this, he kept his gaze focused on Brecht. He offered the Inquisitor his hand, palm up. Brecht placed his own right hand in the Space Marine's grip, blithely ignoring the incongruous physical difference between them.

"Will you follow me into darkness and fire?"

Brecht intoned the words solemnly. "I will."

"Will you be my left hand, the shield on my arm?"

All around him, Brecht became aware of silence. It seemed to him that the mountains themselves were bearing witness to his oaths and the storm held its breath above them.

"I will."

"Will you hold my secrets in the vault of your heart?"

Brecht didn't even think of hesitating. "I will."

"Will you follow me into fire and light?"

Brecht grinned fiercely. "Oh, yes, Brother. I will."

Patroclus nodded, apparently satisfied. "Then get a move on, Inquisitor. We haven't got all day."

Still smiling, Brecht followed the Space Marine down into the valley and entered the sacred Monastery-Barracks of the Scarlet Storm Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes.

* * *

Dranguille and Livia re-entered the cell. Neither of them bothered to sit down.

The interrogator's red hair flopped over her eye dressing, as she leant forward. The smile she sported was cold, predatory. LaFayette bridled a little when she saw it.

"Liked puzzles did he, your former lover?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"It seems that Emile left us a message. Clever man."

LaFayette's eyes narrowed. She suddenly looked worried, thought Livia. Shaken.

"What… what do you mean?"

Livia studied LaFayette's face thoughtfully. Underneath the tanned skin and skilfully applied cosmetics, she was just a woman - trapped, alone and, she realised with a start, grieving.

And Dranguille knew this. Placing her hands on the table, she bent closer.

"A single word, Eloise," she said, quietly. "Half-blotted out by Emile's blood. Only four letters remaining. The last four. G. A. N. T." She drew back, her remaining eye glittering for a moment in the harsh lighting. "Mean anything to you?"

But Eloise LaFayette was already nodding, her face tight with apprehension. "Emperor, they're going off-world."

Livia took an involuntary step forward. After what seemed like days (and surely it must have been that long – despite the evidence of the chrono on her wrist) of being on the defensive, responding to situations rather than taking charge of them, the Inquisition team was finally being given the opportunity to take the initiative. Perhaps.

"Go on," said Dranguille, softly.

LaFayette swallowed. "Emile had a ship. A small yacht. But it's fast. Warp capable, too."

"Xenos?" sneered the Interrogator.

LaFayette glared up at her. "Maybe. What difference does it make? Emile used it on long hauls for specialist merchandise. It has a four-man crew. Pilot. Navigator. And two hands. You might be able to do without the hands, I suppose."

For the first time, Livia interrupted.

"Why are you so sure that that's what the message is referring to?"

LaFayette smiled grimly, but her eyes were clouded with sorrow.

"The ship's name is Termagant." She gave a short, bitter laugh which sounded small and insignificant in that soulless room. "He said he named it after me."

* * *

Dranguille swept out of the cell, her face set in a mask of grim determination. Livia trailed a couple of paces behind her, her mind racing. If the heretics who had masterminded the operation on Phrysia Secundus were preparing to travel off-world, then time was of the essence.

Smyre was waiting for them in the corridor outside the cell. He raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

"Well?"

"We've got to get someone down to the spaceport immediately. Who are our nearest operatives?"

Smyre frowned. "You know who. Brecht wanted them left alone after what happened on Harnel."

"Well, Brecht's not here, is he? We don't have time for niceties. Contact them. Tell them to get themselves to the spaceport and not bother with any of the usual subterfuge. If they have to start flashing rosettes, then so be it."

Smyre nodded. "And what are their instructions?"

Dranguille's eye flared with an implacable resolve. "There's a ship at the port called the Termagant, registered to one of Marchmont's front companies. They are to prevent it from leaving this planet at any cost – up to and including the destruction of the port itself. Clear?"

Again, Smyre nodded. "Perfectly." He reached for the ever present vox bead at his throat. Livia watched carefully as he made the call. "Communications unit? Patch me through to Bex and Ekkert. Now."


	34. Chapter 6d

_Well, it's been over a year since I updated this, a slightly depressing state of affairs for which I can only apologise. I hope this update is worth the wait! :)_

The late afternoon sun hung low in the sky, almost but not quite sinking below the tall, baroque buildings of the Temple Zone, the administrative and commercial heart of Brachius City. The sounds of the Brachian rush hour – the cries of street vendors desperate to wring another drop of profit from the fading day; the muted snarling of groundcars torturously crawling through narrow streets and the heavier rumbling of transports – drifted into the apartment on the Rue de Plaisir through the open window. The blind over the window was half-drawn, but it barely moved in the close heavy air, throwing a hard-edged rectangle of bright light across the pale-skinned figure reclining on the plush double bed.

Rebecca Alasynde Marielle de la Fleur brought her lho-stick to her painted lips and sucked slowly, exhaling a moment later a fragrant cloud of smoke that uncoiled away from her with almost glacial grace. The blind was half-drawn partly to keep out the worst of the sun and partly to notify would-be clients that Rebecca, known as Bex to her friends, was currently engaged. Brachian prostitutes had, over the course of many centuries, developed a series of codes and signifiers associated with their work and, although she mostly thought of herself as something different from the streetwalkers of the Scarlet Quarter, she nevertheless employed their methods. It was simpler – and safer – that way.

With a delicate economical movement, Rebecca placed the still-smouldering lho-stick in the ash tray perched on her bedside table and turned her attention to her client, who was mechanically dressing himself at the foot of the bed. Not for the first time, she found herself pondering the way a lot of her clients couldn't stop looking at her on entering her apartment and couldn't bear to look at her just prior to leaving. She wasn't offended. Not by this one, at any rate. Idly, she stretched her foot out towards him, wiggling her toes experimentally. She felt a curious languor stealing over her, caused in part by the luxurious warmth of the rectangle of sunlight on her chest. It would be tempting to give into it, to close her eyes and let Melain see himself out, but she couldn't, she knew. There was real work to be done.

"Will I see you again?" she said, injecting just the right amount of plaintive longing into her tone. "Soon?"

Melain turned to her, smiling shyly. Emperor, the poor lad was blushing! It took all of Rebecca's self-control not to giggle. Instead, she stared at him through wide, blue eyes, her lips parted, her arms by her sides resting on the bed, doing nothing to hide her body. He was a young man, Melain, barely out of his teens. Although he was the son of a noble Brachian family, he possessed none of the aristocracy's usual arrogance and cruelty. Rather, in some respects, he was touchingly diffident and respectful. Today had been his third visit to her and his fingers had still trembled as they touched her skin. His kisses had been nervous, tentative. If circumstances had been different, she might have liked him. If circumstances had been different.

Melain half-turned towards her, almost but not quite meeting her gaze.

"I... I'm not sure," he said. Rebecca let the barest trace of a smile grace her lips. Melain had a soft, cultured voice. It was the voice of a priest. Or a poet. "Father has been asking questions and..." The young man glanced away again, returning to the stiff starched collar of his expensive shirt for a moment, fumbling with the tiny silver fastenings before letting his hands fall in exasperation. "Oh, blast!"

Rebecca allowed the smile to blossom on her rouged, full lips, as she slid across the bed towards him.

"Let me," she murmured, reaching up to the young man's neck. "You'll never get out of here at this rate and then what will father say?" She took longer than was strictly necessary in fastening the collar, letting her fingers brush against his throat and jawline. She was close enough to see his pulse beat urgently in his neck. "There," she said primly, as she finished. "All done."

Melain swallowed nervously. She gazed at him for a moment, still largely naked after their earlier exertions._That's right,_ she thought. _Take one last look. Remember this moment._ Quite deliberately, she leant over and pecked him on the cheek. His arms stayed resolutely by his side and he glanced down.

"Thank you," he muttered.

Smiling, she sat back. "You're most welcome, young gentleman." The exaggerated courtesy brought the shy smile back with a vengeance. "So what has father been saying?"

The smile vanished, but the intimacy it had sealed remained. Melain leaned forward a little, taking Rebecca into his confidence.

"Father's planning something important. He won't tell me what. He doesn't want the other houses finding out, but it's something to do with the Tanner Guild." Melain frowned. "He's been terribly irritable lately - more so than usual."

Rebecca shrugged, doing her best to hide her excitement. If House Melain was trying to broker a deal with the Tanner Guild then no wonder Melain senior was jumpier than usual. The Tanners controlled all but one of the major supply routes into and out of the city. The implication was that House Melain wanted to move something quickly and quietly. Brecht would definitely be interested in this.

Stifling an affected yawn, Rebecca grimaced. "Business and politics, Jamil. That's all you ever talk about." She patted his forearm affectionately. "Next time... less talk, more..." She trailed off coyly and Melain blushed again. She made a show of shooing him out of the door. "Go on, young gentleman. I'm sure you've got more important things to do than hang around here."

Mumbling gallant apologies, the young nobleman got up and left the apartment. She waited to hear the downstairs door slam shut and then began to get dressed, the faint smile still tugging at the corners of her mouth.

* * *

The downstairs apartment was gloomy in comparison to its first floor counterpart, but its occupant preferred it that way. Ekkert di Vrinz, outcast prince of the Fri'arkay clan and lost heir to the honoured throne of his tribal forefathers, had been raised on a jungle world many light years distant from Phrysia Secundus. Most at home in shadow and gloom, he found the brightness of the late Phrysian summer too distracting for the task he had set himself this afternoon. Consequently he had drawn the curtains across the large sash windows and now sat in a filtered light that comfortingly reminded him of days spent tracking game under the jungle canopy.

If only his self-appointed task today was as straightforward.

Holding the book out in front of him, he stared at the left-hand page and its handful of words while trying to avoid looking at the brightly coloured picture on the right-hand page.

"There..." he said slowly, "is... a big... rock?" He looked again at the words, printed in blocky gothic text on a pristine white background. "Rock," he repeated, nodding more confidently this time. "Maria and Marco can... lift it... to..."

The door to the living room opened and Ekkert quickly put the book down. He didn't need to look to know that Bex was framed in the doorway. Her scent gave her away.

"He's gone."

"Yes." Bex walked slowly into the room and he glanced up at her. She was, he would readily admit, a beautiful creature. Her ruffled blonde hair came down to her shoulders, framing a pretty face that bore not a trace of the haughty, high-handed demeanour that he had encountered in so many of this strange world's more 'civilised' citizens. She wore a silk cream blouse over a dark, low-cut body-glove. A thick turquoise belt cinched in the blouse at her waist, accentuating her hips. The sleeves of the blouse were casually rolled up. She wore a wooden bangle, painted the same colour as the belt, on her left forearm. Ekkert sighed. The bangle had been a gift from him - one of the few artifacts from his home world that he had taken with him on his journey with the Highfather's Servant. Its presence might, he hoped, be a peace offering.

"How's it going?"

He held out the book to her, grateful for the opportunity to vent his frustration.

"It is a stupid thing. The words are... stupid. The pictures are..."

She took it from him and turned it over. "I remember this from the scholum. 'Maria and Marco Meet The Orks.' There was a whole series, I think. 'Maria and Marco Meet The Mindworms' was my favourite." She handed it back to him and he brandished the cover at her.

"That," he said, pointing to the large bright green figure on the front of the book, "looks nothing like an ork."

Bex smiled. "It's meant to teach children how to read - not give them an accurate understanding of the enemies of the Imperium. You wouldn't want the Imperium to be defended by whole planets of bedwetters, would you?"

Scowling, Ekkert put the book down. "I suppose not." He stroked the arm of the sofa absently. "He was the young one."

"Yes." Bex drew back a step, the footfall almost inaudible. Her scent was still strong on the still, close air.

"Did he..." Ekkert's tanned, weatherworn face had become an impenetrable mask - almost as if it was made of wood. Bex had to remind herself that, in relative terms, the hunter was not much older than Jamil Melain. "Did he treat you... well?"

Bex sighed. "Yes. You know he did." She folded her arms across her chest and stared at him. "What do you want me to say, Ekkert? What do you want me to do?" She was still close enough to touch him if she wanted to. She hugged herself tightly. "This is what Brecht wants. This is my service for him. For the Emperor."

He stared at her for a moment, a pale familiar anger in his eyes. _Oh, Throne,_ she thought. _Please let it be different this time. Please let him understand._ She waited, but he said nothing.

"And please don't lecture me about what does or does not constitute service to the Emperor," she continued, finally. "Your vows of celibacy..."

"Don't," he said and his voice was as soft as the whisper of a jungle breeze. His eyes held hers in either defiance or desperation. It was impossible to tell.

She made to stride past him, intent on opening the curtains, on letting some light into this dingy little place, but he caught her arm as she walked past. His grip was gentle but insistent. She could have pulled away, but she didn't want to. She had never wanted to.

She turned and looked into his dark brown eyes.

"Please," he said quietly. "I don't... understand. I don' t think I will ever understand. But I know..." All the while he was speaking, he was gently pulling her towards him. She sat awkwardly next to him, drawing her knees up under her, her eyes never leaving his face. "I will always want you near." He brought his hand up to touch her cheek. "I do not want to see you hurt."

She smiled sadly. "I know that, you big fool." And she reached over and kissed him - not as she had with the nobleman's son, but with all the pent-up frustration and passion of the long eight months she had known him. Emperor, working for the Inquisition was complicated enough, but this... this was gloriously, wonderfully ridiculous! After a moment, she broke off, tracing the contours of his lips with her fingers. There were tears, she realised, in his eyes as well as hers. Smiling, she tried to blink hers away. "Anytime you want to break that vow, mighty hunter..."

It was Ekkert's turn to smile sadly, but he held her in his arms anyway and she could feel his heart beat powerfully in his chest as she rested her head upon it.

"What kind of a man," he asked, his voice rumbling quietly in her ear, "would I be if I cast aside words sworn to the Highfather's Servant so easily?"

And there, Bex knew, was the fundamental conundrum of their relationship. She was still reflecting on that realisation when a loud crackling erupted from the aged vox set in the corner of the room.

She sat up and stared first at it then at Ekkert curiously.

"But Brecht said..."

Ekkert shrugged. "The Highfather's Servant calls."

Slowly, gingerly, Bex got up and made her way to the vox which continued to crackle like frying grox meat on a hot plate. She picked up the mouthpiece.

"Bex here."

The familiar tones of Adjutant Smyre filled the room.

"You and Ekkert are to get to the spaceport straight away..."

Behind her, the outcast prince of the Fri'arkay clan, helpless and devoted lover of Rebecca Alasynde Marielle de la Fleur and sworn swordarm of the Highfather and of Brecht, His Servant, prepared himself for battle.

* * *

The creature that had once been Varnis Slack licked his talons clean of blood and growled contentedly. A few yards away, hunched over a work bench, Varl glanced up.

"Enjoy your meal?"

A shivering sigh escaped Slack's lips. For the moment, language was beyond him. For one thing, his jaw and mouth were simply no longer arranged to facilitate human speech. For another, his brain was currently aligned with almost perfect accuracy to the animalistic desire of the hunter. Language was an effete luxury he simply did not require.

He gave the corpse on the floor of the storage shed a cursory, dismissive look. There was still meat on the thing, but it was cooling now. He preferred, he had found in the last few minutes, blood hot and thick on his tongue, flesh raw and fresh in his mouth. He kicked the corpse and it rolled over. A few minutes ago, it had been a spaceport security controller. Now, it was trash.

And _he_ had done that.

He sniffed the air restlessly. Somewhere nearby there was plenty of food. He could sense its close, sweating animal scent, but it was faint. Very faint. He cast a sly look at Varl. The other man was still hunched over the device he had been tinkering with for the last few minutes. Slack sneered contemptuously. Varl had not joined in the hunt or the feast that followed it. He didn't understand the other man's restraint. Ever since the transformation a few hours ago, Slack had seen the trappings of civilisation for what they really were: futile attempts to distract humanity from the inevitability of its own demise. All the monuments, the literature, the technology in the wide vast galaxy couldn't drown out the roaring onrushing tempest of cosmic oblivion. Humanity was doomed to die. The sooner it realised that the better.

Varl thought he was being so clever with his schemes and his plans. Slack just wanted to hunt, to kill, to obliterate life after life after life, to bring the gift of oblivion to the little men and their safe ordered world.

With a newfound sense of stealth guiding his steps, Slack edged away from Varl. Hunger growled in his veins. He had to eat. Cautiously he made his way past the piled crates and storage boxes and slipped out of the shed into the early evening sunlight.

Behind him, Varl straightened up and watched his erstwhile colleague leave, a humourless smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. That had gone easier than he'd expected. The Gods had provided him with the distraction he needed. Poor Slack.

Returning his attention to the bench, he deftly connected the final wire and stepped back, satisfied. Yes, that would do nicely. No need for the superstitious mutterings of a tech-priest. After all, he reflected smugly, you didn't need to believe in the ridiculous figure of the Omnissiah to construct a bomb.


	35. Chapter 6e

Controller Nirel leaned forward, resting his not inconsiderable bulk on his monitoring lectern, and observed his small but dedicated team of underlings and junior adepts performing the various routine tasks that kept the control spire of Brachius City's spaceport operative. Feeling the comforting familiar pride swell in his breast, he glanced out of one of the large picture windows which formed all six of the control hub's walls. The control spire towered some two hundred metres above the spaceport apron. From this vantage point, the terminal and administrative buildings seemed as small and inconsequential as children's toys - albeit toys of a rather drab and weatherworn appearance.

Today had been slow. Slower than usual. Much of the traffic he and his team had dealt with had been local - civilian transports for the most part, inbound from Fortis. Apart from the shuttles descending from the two rogue trader vessels currently in high orbit over Phrysia Secundus, there had been no traffic from outside the planet itself. Nirel sighed contentedly. He liked days like this - days when jobs could be done properly with all due attention given to the rigorous systems of control laid down by the Administratum and enforced by his illustrious predecessors.

A shrill beeping disturbed his reverie and he cast a disapproving glance in the direction of the communications station, where Adept Minor Jurian was flipping the respond switch to 'receive'.

A few seconds passed, during which Jurian seemed to grow paler. Nirel sighed impatiently. It was probably something the lad had eaten. The spotty little dolt was always sickening with something or other.

"Yes…" he heard Jurian mumble. "Yes, at once."

A split second later, Nirel was mildly surprised to see the comms light on his own lectern flashing. The fool had put the vox transmission through to _him!_ What was the idiot thinking? Nirel accepted the transmission with an irritated stabbing motion of his pudgy forefinger.

"Chief Controller Nirel speaking. Please explain your purpose in contacting a beta-level security installation of His Emperor's Holy Adeptus Administratum."

He was vaguely aware of Jurian rising to his feet, but paid the lad no mind. He was probably going to the lavatory to throw up.

A voice, feminine and steely, crackled into his earpiece. "Security clearance code: five-seven-delta-omicron. Repeat security clearance code: five-seven-delta-omicron. Acknowledge."

Nirel spluttered. "What are you talking about?" He glanced up at Jurian who, far from making his way to the lavatory, was hovering nervously around the control lectern, a look of indecision on his pasty face. What did the lad think he was doing? Couldn't he tell his controller was busy? He returned his attention to the voice in his ear. "Who is this? May I remind you that this is a secure installation…"

The voice interrupted him. The voice _interrupted_ him!

"Acknowledge the bloody code or you'll be overseeing the Administratum's sewage treatment plant in Cawth Bay by the end of the week, you cretin!"

Nirel gasped, outraged. "Who is this? You have no right to…"

"Controller!" Jurian had finally plucked up the courage to speak. "The security code."

Without really thinking about it, Nirel put the incoming vox on hold. "Yes, Jurian. What about it?" When he'd first started in the control spire - was it really thirty years ago? - he'd prided himself on memorising all the myriad security codes for the control spire. He struggled for a moment to recall the one that ignorant woman had used.

Jurian helpfully supplied the answer. "Five-seven is the order to lock down the space port, Controller."

"What?! That's ridiculous! What on Holy Terra does this woman…"

For the second time this morning, Nirel found himself being interrupted. At least Jurian had the good grace to appear upset about it.

"It's the Inquisition, Controller! Delta-omicron is the local transmission stamp for the Inquisition!"

Nirel felt his heart stop for a split second. He glanced down at his control lectern where a solitary amber light winked maliciously at him.

Tentatively, he pushed the receive button below it.

"Yes?" he asked, trying to be as solicitous as he could under the circumstances.

The voice spoke again and told him exactly what to do.

* * *

Vivienne Dranguille removed the vox bead from her throat and turned grimly to Smyre and Livia who were standing behind her.

"It's done," she said. "It's up to Bex and Ekkert now. At least for the next forty-five minutes or so. A storm trooper squad's en route?"

This last question had been directed at Smyre and the adjutant nodded. "They've just left."

Dranguille winced as a sharp pain in her ruined eye socket pierced the dull background ache she'd been used to.

Livia frowned. "Are you alright?"

The interrogator scowled. "I'm fine." Straightening, she turned back to Smyre. "When this is all over, I want the controller of that space port mind-wiped and assigned to the most dangerous, back-breaking menial labour you can find."

"That's a little harsh," murmured Livia.

Dranguille rounded on her. "Do you think so, Sister? The man was an imbecile. Worse than that, he was inefficient." She glanced back to Smyre. "See to it, Adjutant."

Smyre inclined his head, his face expressionless. "It'll be done."

The interrogator flicked a stray wisp of fiery red hair out of her face. Her one good eye stared defiantly at Livia for an instant and then she stalked away.

"Meet me in the med-bay, Sister. I want to see the Inquisitor."

* * *

Red.

Red all around. The stone walls, quarried from the mountains that surrounded the complex, were painted a rich crimson colour. They glistened in the fierce light cast by brightly burning torches lining the broad processional corridor. Patroclus and Brecht's footsteps echoed around them, precise solid sounds. The floor on which they were walking was composed of small ceramic tiles, arranged in mosaics that told the stories of the Scarlet Storm's most famous victories. The predominant colour in all of them was red.

Brecht looked up. The vaulted ceiling of the BloodEye was lost in shadow, but he'd be willing to bet that was red, too. If he didn't know better, he'd think that the Scarlet Storm chapter of the Adeptus Astartes was one which took the implications of its name far too literally. But, he did know better. And the Scarlet Storm entered battle in largely grey battle armour, in any case. Not for the first time since entering the chapter's most sacred structure, the Inquisitor was struck by how organic the endless red made his journey feel. It was as if he was walking down an artery towards the very heart of the chapter.

Or perhaps not…

Not for the first time, Brecht felt a twinge of anxiety. On his previous two visits to the chapter's homeworld, he had been received by Hecator, the Scarlet Storm Chapter Master, whose quarters and strategium occupied the entirety of the fourth, central floor of the structure. On this occasion, however, Patroclus was leading him… somewhere else.

He glanced across at the Space Marine. He had fought with Brother Patroclus of the chapter's Third Company on two separate occasions. He was, in many ways, a typical Astartes - honour-bound yet phlegmatic, possessed of an instinctive understanding of the limitations of his role as warrior-monk in an Imperium that owed him much and understood him so very little. His power armour, painted the brooding grey of a threatening thunderstorm, was pitted and scarred, each mark smoothed by both the passage of time and the careful ministrations of its proud bearer. But not removed. No, the Space Marines of the Scarlet Storm did not hide their scars, whatever form they took.

Finally, Brecht studied Patroclus' face. As with all Space Marines, there was a hint of disproportion there. The nose was slightly too flat, the jaw almost ridiculously square. But it was always the eyes that worried Brecht. They were simply not human enough. Oh, they were close, but they were cold things, an Astartes' eyes. They saw things differently - where lesser men saw death and slaughter, they glimpsed glory; where others saw futility, they saw fulfilment; where Brecht had seen horror, they had seen hope. Suddenly, Brecht couldn't look any longer. He was finding this journey - this trek - through the interminable corridors and hallways of the complex oppressive. Beside him, Patroclus kept his gaze firmly focused ahead. If he had noticed the Inquisitor's scrutiny, he gave no indication of it. He could have been walking alone. Brecht was beginning to wish he was.

Ahead of them, the corridor narrowed, ending in a simple stone door, a golden aquila embossed in its centre. Without any warning, Patroclus halted. Brect had to go back a couple of steps.

What now?

"Brother?" asked Brecht mildly.

"Did you enjoy it?" The question was delivered flatly, but there was something in Patroclus' eyes that suggested this was not an idle inquiry.

"I'm sorry, I don't…"

"The daemon's embrace," said Patroclus. "Did you enjoy it?"

Brecht just had time to feel the icy touch of fear upon his skin and then Patroclus punched him.

* * *

Brecht's bedside was…busier than Livia had expected.

The lad whose name she had forgotten earlier on in the day was… well, 'cowering' was as good a word as any to describe what he was doing. Given the state of medicae-investigator Thesk, that seemed like a sensible strategy.

"… were you thinking?" Thesk was livid. The blood splattered on his surgical smock only served to emphasise his anger. "We have no way of knowing what's going on in there!" He stabbed an angry finger at Brecht's unconscious form. "To administer any form of medication without consulting me is not only grossly impertinent, but also suicidally irresponsible."

"Th... the psychic indicators were..."

"Fluctuating? Nonsensical?" Thesk glared at the young nurse, his augmetic eye a cold blue. "Brecht's a high-level psyker who's hanging on to life by the barest of threads. What did you expect?"

Dranguille had to clear her throat for a second time before Thesk registered her presence.

"I gather things are bad."

Thesk glowered at her. "What do you think?"

Dranguille's eye narrowed. "I think I'd prefer a more professional assessment."

The medicae-investigator took a calming breath. "Put simply, Brecht's mind is in peril. While his body clings to life, his unconscious control of his psychic gifts is failing. Torvald attempted to medicate the Inquisitor with some low-strength sedatives." He licked his lips uncertainly. "It might work. But, it might just as easily kill him. Or worse." He shot a contemptuous glare at Torvald. "In any case, it was a stupidly reckless thing to do."

"And has it worked?"

Thesk shrugged. "Residual indicators have stabilised somewhat, but... it's too early to tell, really."

Dranguille stepped towards the bed, her hand mechanically drawing the las pistol from its holster at her hip. Thesk's face was a grim mask. To one side of Brecht's bed, a medicae-servitor whirred and burbled to itself, utterly incapable of sensing the growing tension in the room, much less responding to it.

Livia stared ahead of her, not quite believing the scene unfolding before her. "What are you doing, Vivienne?"

The interrogator held the las pistol in a light grip. "Getting ready. In case things get worse."

"You can't just..."

"Of course I can." Dranguille sniffed derisively. "In fact, I've got standing orders to do so." Her next words were addressed to Thesk. "How long have we got?"

Another shrug. "I'm not sure. From the readings Torvald witnessed, I rather think things are coming to a head, though. I must point out... the incidence of physical trauma occurring so soon after a psychic attack like the one he experienced in the mansion... I'm sorry. I don't hold out much hope."

Dranguille stood by Brecht's side, staring at the Inquisitor's pale, drawn face. Her expression was unreadable. The white gauze of her eye dressing reflected the harsh anti-septic glare of the overhead lights. From where she was standing by the door, Livia couldn't see the interrogator's other eye. She could, however, see the other woman's breath escaping in thin wisps of vapour from her nostrils.

"Is there anything I can do, Vivienne?" asked Livia softly.

"You could try praying," came the surprisingly gentle reply. "For him. Wherever he is."


End file.
